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Selected Works 
of 

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Containing only those 
poems which time 
has proven 
immortal 



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NOV 16 1914 



of 

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Containing only those poems which 
time has proven immortal 







Printed by THE CLOVER PRESS, New York 

Incorporated 






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CLA388445 



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There is blown to us an Oriental wind; 
Wafted from over the walls of Omar's tomb, 

Breathing a message of his mystical philosophy 
To all those who, on their joyous errand — reach the spot — 

Where I made One — and — turn down 

it 

An empty Qlass. 






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Ufarattorii 



EDWARD FITZGERALD. 



EDWARD FITZGERALD has produced a world 
poem. 

Let us say, there are no new thoughts, all are 
old, even as with jewels re-set. Every thought of every 
man or woman is but a story which has been told over 
and over again in the ages behind us. Except along the 
lines of discovery, science and psychic phenomena, there 
can be almost nothing original, and in these fields we do 
not find expressions in verse. Whoever translates the 
scraps and fragments in the Persian (no doubt the say- 
ings of one — Omar Khayyam, written in the 11th 
Century), and knowing the uncertainties of stories told, 
should willingly and with sincere thanks, give to Fitz- 
gerald full credit, for that which he so modestly claims 
belonged to another, finding joy in the thought that he 
has rendered to old Omar his rightful dominion and that 
position which the centuries had covered with forgetfulness. 
This is but justice to that genius who has given to the world 
not only one of its greatest poems, but one so unique, that 
it has created profound mind impressions, resulting in a 
universal cult. 



Page 2 



RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 

To the inspired work of this genius, Richard Le 
Gallienne, the world is likewise indebted ; for among the 
several who have followed Fitzgerald, Richard Le 
Gallienne stands pre-eminent. Among the three hundred 
and eighty-four verses descriptive of the coming of Spring 
— where in all the wide ocean of poetry can be found a 
more beautiful idyl than this : 

"And many a lovely girl that long hath lain 
Beneath the grass, out in the sun and rain, 

Lifts up a daisied head to hear him sing, 
Hearkens a little, smiles, and sleeps again/' 

It seems strange that Richard Le Gallienne should 
consider it in keeping that an apology for his exquisite 
verses be called for. 

It matters little to the world at large, whether of 
our own, or of an unfamiliar tongue — this world looks 
only at results, and they are the final test of all achieve- 
ments in all spheres of life. 

Should Richard Le Gallienne never mould other 
yellow petals (as he so delightfully calls them) into fra- 
grant blossoms — then the charm with which he has 
dowered Omar, will need no mirror to reflect its love- 
liness. 

Whatever Omar's rendering may have amounted to, 
Richard Le Gallienne has caught that melodious ring in 
his lyrics, redolent of the perfume of roses, and shrouded 
in Eastern Mysticism 



Page 3 



SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON. 

This celebrated Englishman, who adopted the Sufi 
teachings, believed with Camoens, heart and soul — 

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect 
applause; 

He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self- 
made laws. 

This pilgrim believed he had a message to deliver 
and aspired to preach a faith of his own. He looked 
with impartial eye upon the endless variety of systems, 
maintained by men of ability and honesty. For he was 
weary of wandering over the world, and finding every 
petty race wedded to its own opinions; claiming the 
monopoly of Truth and holding all others to be in error; 
raising disputes of bitterness and virulence in inverse 
ratio to the importance of the argumented matter. A 
peculiarly acute observation had taught him, that many 
of these agitated families, were par in the intellectual 
process of perception and reflection; and in the business 
of the visible working world they were confessedly by 
no means superior to one another. Whereas in abstruse 
matters of mere Faith, not admitting direct and sensual 
evidence, one in a 'hundred would claim to be right, and 
immodestly charge the other ninety-nine with being 
wrong. 

Thus it was he sought to discover a system which 
would prove them all right and all wrong; and there- 
fore would reconcile their differences, unite their past 
creeds, and while accounting for the present, would 



Page 4 

anticipate the future with a continuous and uninterrupted 
development, by a process intensely positive and con- 
structive. Such a system not being limited by time, 
space, or race, would prove as extensive as Matter itself, 
and, consequently, eternal. 

In added detail-Christianity and Islamism had been 
on their trial for the past ten or twelve centuries, and 
while ardent in proselytizing, yet they embraced only 
one-tenth and one-twentieth of the human race. Our 
Pilgrim accounted for this tardy and unsatisfactory 
progress of "pure truths/' by the innate imperfections 
of the same. Both proposed a reward for mere belief, 
and a penalty for simple unbelief; which rewards and 
punishments, by the way, were very disproportionate. 
Thus was everything reduced to a scale of unrefined 
egotism and the demoralizing effects were becoming 
clearer to every progressive age. 

As our Pilgrim sought "Truth" only (truth as far as 
man, in the present phase of his development was able 
to comprehend it), he regretted the excessive importance 
attached to a possible future state: — he looked upon this 
as a psychical stimulant, — or day dream, whose revulsion 
and reaction disordered waking life. He was too wise to 
affirm or deny the existence of another world, for life 
beyond the grave, there is no consensus of mankind, no 
opinion held SEMPER, ET UBIQUE, ET AB OMNI- 
BUS. And truly — as the Past has been, so shall the 
Future be. Yet again the dogma of a Future life is by 
no means Catholic or universal. Even the intellectual 
faculties are mute, and bear no testimony to facts upon 
the subject. We may believe what we are taught: we 



Page 5 

can know nothing. Man has done much during the 
sixty-eight centuries representing his history (even the 
school-boy is a miracle of learning compared with the 
Cave-man, and the palaeolithic race). 

To continue, — we find in our Pilgrim's view (that of 
the Sufi), the usual dash of Buddhistic pessimism, yet 
not in the Nihilistic sense of Hood's poem. For the 
former uttered merely a healthy wail over the shortness 
and the miseries of life, because he found all created 
things — 

Measure the world, with "Me" immense. 

He held with St. Augustine that Absolute Evil was 
impossible because it was always rising up into good 
and was therefore the active form of good. Like the 
great Pagans who believed — that man was born good; 
while the Christian, "tormented by the things divine" 
cleaves to the comforting doctrine of innate sinfulness. 
Hence the universal tenet that man should do good in 
order to gain by it here and hereafter; or the "en- 
lightened selfishness" which says, 'Act well and get com- 
pound interest in a future state.' 

Again he claimed that whereas war brought about 
countless individual miseries, yet it forwarded general 
progress by raising the stronger upon the ruins of the 
weaker races. Like men of far higher strain, who deny 
divinely the divine, he spoke the things that other men 
thought and hid, and believed that "we gain infinitely 
more than we lose in abandoning belief in the reality of 
revelation." True, he was an Eastern — and literally 
meant — Strive to learn — to know — for right ideas lead to 
right actions. 



Page 6 

Note his modified fatalism on the subject of Con- 
science and Repentance, as expressed so clearly in these 
lines: 

Never repent because thy will with will of Fate be not at one: 
Think, an thou please, before thou dost, but never rue the deed 
when done. 

He believed with Lamark's — "The will is, in truth, 
never free." 

And again — an original oriental subtlety — we in- 
terpret here: 

Of all the safest ways of Life, the safest way is still to doubt. 

A man who believes in everything equally and 
generally may be said to believe in — nothing. It is far 
from a simple European view which makes honest Doubt 
worth a dozen of the Creeds. If we can interpret a 
meaning — it is that the so-called moral faculties of man, 
fancy and ideality, must lord it over the perceptive and 
reflective powers — in itself a simple absurdity. Such 
produced a Torquemada, who, shedding floods of honest 
tears, caused his victims to be burnt alive. Bigots brand 
this train of theories, as "Doubt, Denial, and Destruc- 
tion." 

Man he considered to be a result of the inter-action of 
organism and environment, and that the human machine 
depended upon the physical theory of life ; every cor- 
poreal fact and phenomenon was a mere product of 
organization and living bodies were subject to the 
natural law governing the lifeless and the inorganic. 
On the other side, the religionist assures us man is not 
a mere toy of Fate, but a free agent, responsible to him- 
self, with duties and work to perform. Mind, to him, 



Page 7 

was a word describing a special operation of matter, 
the faculties generally were manifestations of movements 
in the central nervous system ; and every idea was a cer- 
tain little pulsation of a certain little mass, — the brain. 

Virtually he said, "I am an individual, a circle touch- 
ing and intersecting my neighbors at certain points, but 
nowhere corresponding, nowhere blending. Physically 
I am not identical in all points with other men. Morally I 
differ from them, in nothing do the approaches of knowl- 
edge, my five organs of sense, exactly resemble those 
of any other being. ERGO, the effect of the world, of 
life, of natural objects, will not in my case be the same 
as with the beings most resembling me. Thus I claim 
the right of creating for my own and private use, the 
system which most imports me; and if the reasonable 
leave be refused to me, I take it without leave." 

Existence in itself implies effort, pain and sorrow; 
the higher the creature, the more it suffers. The com- 
mon clay enjoys little and suffers little, such is the law 
under which man is born — and he must obey it with 
blind obedience. He can not enter into the question 
whether life is worth living, or whether he would elect 
to be born. 

The ethical and not the intellectual worship of 
"Nature" seemed to hold him. The doctrines of the 
Materialist, in opposition to the spiritualist seemed to 
encircle his "eschatology" ; a distinction far more marked 
in the West than in the East, for Europe draws a hard, 
dry line between Spirit and Matter, and Asia does not. 
We know that the Idealist objects that the Materialists 
cannot 'agree upon fundamental points; that they can- 
not define what is an Atom, and that they cannot say 



Page 8 

what Matter is, tho proving the existence of Spirit while 
denying that of Matter. 

The reply comes that the want of agreement shows 
only a study insufficiently advanced; that man cannot 
describe an atom because he is duly an infant in science, 
yet there is no reason why his mature manhood should 
not pass through error to truth and knowledge. 

Modern thought tends more and more to reject 
crude idealism and support the monistic theory, the 
double aspect, the transfigured realism. To discuss the 
Nature of Things in Themselves. 

With Our Pilgrim, the soul was not material, he 
regarded it as a state of things, not a thing, a word de- 
noting the sense of individual identity. But the brain-ac- 
tion, or the mind, is not confined to the reasoning 
faculties, nor could he afford to ignore the sentiments, the 
affections which are, the most potent realities of life. 
They seem to demand a future life, even a state of re- 
wards and punishments from the "Potter of the East." 
Yet the mass of the nations, the Confucians, protest 
emphatically against "fixing their speculations on an un- 
known world.'' But even the votaries of all ages, races 
and faiths, cannot deny that the next world is a copy, more 
or less idealized, of the present. That it is a mere con- 
tinuation, and the continuation is "not proven." 
It is most hard to be a Man. 
And our Pilgrim found his sole consolation in self- 
cultivation, and the pleasures of the affections. His ideal 
was of the highest : his praise is reserved for : 

— Lives 
Lived in obedience to the inner law 
Which cannot alter. 




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CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Foreword 1 

PART I 

Sketch of Edward Fitzgerald •V^** 9 *** ' * -^ 

Version of Edward Fitzgerald's "Rubaiyat of 

Omar Khayyam " 19 

PART II 
Version of Richard Le Gallienne's ' ' Rubaiyat 
of Omar Khayyam " 41 

PART III 

Sketch of Sir Richard Francis Burton 55 

Version of Sir Richard Francis Burton's "The 

Kasidah " • 63 

PART IV 

Poem to Omar Khayyam Ill 

Sketch of Justin Huntly McCarthy 113 

Version of Justin Huntly McCarthy's "Rubaiyat 

of Omar Khayyam " 117 



V 



x 




PART I 



Page 15 



EDWARD FITZGERALD, whom the world has learned, in 
spite of his own efforts to remain within the shadow of 
anonymity, to look upon as one of the rarest poets of the 
last century, was born at Bredfield, in Suffolk, March 31, 
1809. The future 'Omar' was of Irish extraction, his father, 
John Purcell, of Kilkenny, Ireland, married Mary Frances Fitz- 
gerald, and thus added that distinguished name to his own 
patronymic. Both families claimed descent from Norman war- 
riors of the eleventh century. (This circumstance may have had 
some influence in attracting Fitzgerald to the study of Persian 
poetry.) 

Among Fitzgerald's amiable associates during his college days 
at Trinity in 1826, were several young men of remarkable abilities; 
Alfred Tennyson, William Donne, and William Makepeace Thack- 
eray, being among the number. Their long friendship was later 
touchingly referred to by the Laureate in dedicating his last poem 
to the memory of Edward Fitzgerald. Edward B. Cowell, one of 
the younger Cambridge men with whom he became acquainted 
during his pilgrimages to the university, was a man of the highest 
attainments in Oriental learning. They often read together the 
poetical remains of Khayyam, and it may be said that Cowell 
disentombed Omar's poems from oblivion, and to the transmuting 
genius of Fitzgerald no Persian poet is so well known to-day 
in the western world as Abu-'l-fat'h 'Omar, son of Ibrahim, the 
Tentmaker of Naishaupur. 

Edward Fitzgerald was so careful to conceal his own identity, 
and put so low a valuation upon his own performance in letters 
as to call his talent the "feminine of genius." He wrote to Cowell : 
"I send you poor old Omar. I doubt you will regret you ever 
introduced him to me. When one has done one's best, and is 
sure that that best is better than so many will take pains to do, 
tho* far from the best that might be done, one likes to make 



Page 16 

an end of the matter by print. I suppose very few people have 
ever taken such pains in translation as I have, tho' certainly not 
to be literal. But, at all costs a thing must live, with a trans- 
fusions of one's own worse life if one can't retain the original's 
better." Fitzgerald continuing to hope that Cowell would edit 
Omar, wrote enthusiastically of his opinions regarding "the most 
remarkable of the Persian Poets," in whom he continually kept 
finding out evidences of logical fancy not dreamed of before. 

In '58, Fitzgerald took his little packet of "Rubaiyat" to Mr. 
Quaritch, and it was printed as a small quarto pamphlet bearing 
the publisher's name, but not the author's. A complete failure 
at first, it received, nevertheless, a sufficient distribution by being 
quickly reduced from the price of five shillings, and placed in 
the box marked a penny each. Thus forced into circulation, the 
200 copies were soon exhausted. 

Here is was that Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mr. Swinburne, and 
Captain Richard Burton 'became buyers; and their influence was 
sufficient to attract observation to the singular beauties of this 
poem, anonymously translated from the Persian. 

The following year, Fitzgerald, in the refuge of his incog- 
nito (from which vantage point he derived no small innocent 
gratification from the curiosity aroused on all sides), gave the 
MS. of his second edition to Mr. Quaritch, and the "Rubaiyat" 
came into circulation once again, but with several alterations and 
additions. 

The vogue of "old Omar" (as Fitzgerald affectionately called 
his work) went on increasing and was also received with eagerness 
by American readers. At that time, the mere mention of Omar be- 
tween two strangers meeting, acted like a sign of freemasonry, 
and at once established a bond of friendship. 

Edward Fitzgerald brought to Omar a "perfected touch from 
the skill with which he had strung the loose pearls of Jami on 
the thread of allegory." For in reading Jami, Fitzgerald's hand was 
broken in to his art and the essence of the art itself became so 
infused with his own thought that it was no longer art but 
temperament, and spoken in the translation of Omar as if an 
original word. 



Page 17 

For when knowledge becomes assimilated in the mind of the 
scholar, it shows in his character. And as the Chinese philosopher, 
Wan Yang Ming puts it : "To know and to act are one and the same." 

Fitzgerald enriched English literature with poetry of distinct 
and permanent value, and his best epitaph is found in Tennyson's 
"Tiresias and other poems," published immediately after Edward 
Fitzgerald's quiet exit from this stormy stage in 1883, and in the 
seventy-fifth year of his age. 

Since life flies, what matter it whether it be sweet or bitter? 
Since our souls must escape through one's lips, what matter it 
whether it be 'at Naishapur or Babylon ? 

Drink, then, for after thou and I are dust the moon will for 
many days pass from her last quarter to her first quarter, and 
from her first to her last. 






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Edward Fitzgerald ' s 
Version of the 

Hubatyat 



** , "* f, «w*»** BM9l V 



of 

©mar SCljaggam 

(Edition 




(The fourth edition of 1879 is used entire, except for two verses taken from the 
first edition, and so marked*.) 



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RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 21 



Suhatgat of ©mar SCtjaygam 

* \ WAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night 

-Zjl Has flung the Stone that puts the Sta*s*to Flight: 

And Lo ! the Hunter of the East has caught 
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light. 

Before the phantom of False morning died, 
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried, 
"When all the Temple is prepared within, 
"Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?" 

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before 
The Tavern shouted — "Open then the Door ! 

"You know how little while we have to stay, 
"And, once departed, may return no more." 

Now the New Year reviving old Desires, 
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, 

Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough 
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires. 

Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose, 

And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows; 

But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine, 
And many a Garden by the Water blows. 



•Admirers of Fitzgerald are agreed that there is a 'Homeric Splendour' 
about this quatrain printed first in 1859 and not found in any of the later 
varients. 



Page 22 FITZGERALD VERSION 

And David's lips are lockt; but in divine 
High-piping Pehlevi, with "Wine! Wine! Wine! 

"Red Wine!" — the Nightingale cries to the Rose 
That sallow cheek of her's to' incarnadine. 

*Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring 
Your Winter Garment of Repentance fling: 

The Bird of Time has but a little way 
To fly — and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing. 

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon, 
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, ^^ 
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, 
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one. 

Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say ; 
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday? 

And this first Summer month that brings the Rose 
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away. 

/ 
Well, let it take them ! What have we to do 
With Kaikobad the Great, or Kaikhosru? 

Let Zal and Rustum bluster as they will, 
Or Hatim call to Supper— heed not you. 

With me along the strip of Herbage strown 
That just divides the desert from the sown, 

Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot — 
And Peace to Mahmud on his golden Throne! 



*The compiler has taken the liberty of inserting this quatrain, taken from 
the edition of 1859, in place of the one found in the regular edition of 1879. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 2 3 

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, 
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou 

Beside me singing in the Wilderness— 
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! 

Some for the Glories of This World; and some 
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; 

Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, 
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum! 

Look to the blowing Rose about us "Lo, 

"Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow, 

"At once the silken tassel of my Purse 
"Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw " 

And those who husbanded the Golden grain, 
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain, 

Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd 
As, buried once, Men want dug up again. 

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon 
Turns Ashes— or it prospers ; and anon, 

Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, 
Lighting a little hour or two — was gone. 

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai 
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, 

How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp 
Abbde his destin'd Hour, and went his way. 

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep 

The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep: 

And Bahram, that great Hunter— the Wild Ass 
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep. 



Page 24 FITZGERALD VERSION 

I sometimes think that never blows so red 
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled ; 

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears 
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head. 

And this reviving Herb whose tender Green 
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean— 
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows 
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen! 

Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears 
TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears: 

TO-MORROW!— Why, To-morrow I may be 
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years. 

For some we loved, the loveliest and the best 
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest, 
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before, 
And one by one crept silently to rest. 

And we, that now make merry in the Room 
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom, 

Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth 
Descend— ourselves to make a Couch— for whom? 

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, 
Before we too into the Dust descend; 

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie, 
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and— sans End! 

Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare, 
And those that after some TO-MORROW stare, 
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries, 
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There." 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 25 

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd 
Of the Two Worlds so wisely—they are thrust 

Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn 
Are scatters, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust. 

Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 

About it and about : but evermore 
Came out by the same door where in I went. 

With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow, 

And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow; 

And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd— 
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go." 

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing 
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing; 

And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, 
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing. 

What, without asking, hither hurried Whence? 
And, without asking, Whither hurried hence! 

Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine 
Must drown the memory of that insolence! 

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate 
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate, 

And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; 
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate. 

There was the Door to which I found no Key; 
There was the Veil through which I might not see: 

Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee 
There was— and then no more of THEE and ME. 



Page 26 FITZGERALD VERSION 

Earth could not answer ; nor the Seas that mourn 
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn; 

Nor rolling Heaven, with all his Signs reveal'd 
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn. 

Then of the THEE IN ME who works behind 
The Veil, I lifted up my hands to find 

A Lamp amid the Darkness ; and I heard, 
As from Without— "THE ME WITHIN THEE 

BLIND!" 
Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn 
I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn: 

And Lip to Lip it murmur' d— "While you live, 
"Drink — for, once dead, you never shall return." 

I think the Vessel, that with fugitive 
Articulation answer'd, once did live, 

And drink; and Ah! the passive Lip I kiss'd, 
How many Kisses might it take— and give! 

For I remember stopping by the way 

To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay: 

And with its all-obliterated Tongue 
It murmur'd— "Gently, Brother, gently, pray!" 

And has not such a Story from of Old 
Down Man's successive generations roll'd 

Of such a clod of saturated Earth 
Cast by the Maker into Human mould? 

And not a drop that from our Cups we throw 
For Earth to drink of, but may steal below 

To quench the fire of Anguish in some Eye 
There hidden— far beneath, and long ago. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 27 

As then the Tulip for her morning sup 

Of Heav'nly Vintage from the soil looks up, 

Do you devoutly do the like, till Heav'n 
To Earth invert you— like an empty Cup. 

Perplext no more with Human or Divine, 
To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign, 

And lose your fingers in the tresses of 
The Cypress-slender Minister of Wine. 

And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press, 
End in what All begins and ends in— Yes ; 

Think then you are TO-DAY what YESTERDAY 
You were— TO-MORROW you shall not be less. 

So when the Angel of the darker Drink 
At last shall find you by the river-brink, 
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul 
Forth to your Lips to quaff— you shall not shrink. 

Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside, 
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride, 

Wer't not a Shame— wer't not a Shame for him 
In this clay carcase crippled to abide? 

'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest 
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; 
^ The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash 
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest. 

And fear not lest Existence closing your 
Account, and mine, should know the like no more; 

The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd 
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour. 



Page 28 FITZGERALD VERSION 

When You and I behind the Veil are past, 

Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last, 

Which of our Coming and Departure heeds 
As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast. 

A Moment's Halt — a momentary taste 
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste— 
And Lo ! — the phantom Caravan has reach't 
The NOTHING it set out from— Oh, make haste! 

Would you that spangle of Existence spend 
About THE SECRET— quick about it, Friend! 

A Hair perhaps divides the False and True — 
And upon what, prithee, does life depend? 

A Hair perhaps divides the False and True ; 
Yes; and a single Alif were the clue — 

Could you but find it — to the Treasure-house, 
And peradventure to THE MASTER too ; 

Whose secret Presence, through Creation's veins 
Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains; 
Taking all shapes from Man to Mahi ; and 
They change and perish all — but He remains; 

A moment guess'd — then back behind the Fold 
Immerst of Darkness round the Drama roll'd 

Which, for the Pastime of Eternity, 
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold. 

But if in vain, down on the stubborn floor 
Of Earth, and up to Heav'n's unopening Door, 

You gaze TO-DAY, while You are You — how then 
TO-MORROW, You when shall be You no more? 



RVBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 29 

Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit 
Of This and That endeavour and dispute ; 

Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape 
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit. 

You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse 
I made a Second Marriage in my house; 

Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed, 
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse. 

For "Is" and "IS-NOT" though with Rule and Line, 
And "UP-AND-DOWN" by Logic I define, 
Of all that one should care to fathom, I 
Was never deep in anything but—Wine. 

Ah, but my Computations, People say, 
Reduced the Year to better reckoning? — Nay, 

'T was only striking from the Calendar 
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday. 

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape, 

Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape 

Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder ; and 
He bid me taste of it; and 't was— the Grape! 

The Grape that can with Logic absolute 
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute: 

The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice 
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute: 

The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord, 
That all the misbelieving and black Horde 

Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul 
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword. 



Page 30 FITZGERALD VERSION 

Why, be this Juice the growth of God, who dare 
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare? 

A Blessing, we should use it, should we not? 
And if a Curse — why, then, Who set it there? 

I must abjure the Balm of Life, I must, 
Scared by some After-reckoning ta'en on trust, 
Or lured with Hope of some Diviner Drink, 
To fill the Cup — when crumbled into Dust! 

threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! 
One thing at least is certain — This Life flies; 

One thing is certain and the rest is Lies ; 
The Flower that once has blown forever dies. 

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who 
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through, 

Not one returns to tell us of the Road, 
Which to discover we must travel too. 

The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd 
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn'd, 

Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep 
They told their comrades, and to Sleep return'd. 

1 sent my Soul through the Invisible, 
Some letter of that After-life to spell: 

And by and by my Soul return'd to me, 
And answer'd, "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:" 

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, 
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire 

Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves, 
So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 31 

We are no other than a moving row 

Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go 

Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show ; 

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays 
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days; 

Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays, 
And one by one back in the Closet lays. 

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes, 

But Here or There as strikes the Player goes; 

And He that toss'd you down into the Field, 

He knows about it all — He knows — HE knows! 

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, 
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, 
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. 

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky, 
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die, 

Lift not your hands to /* for help — for It 
As impotently moves as you or I. 

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead, 
And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed : 

And the first Morning of Creation wrote 
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read. 

Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare; 
TO-MORROW'S Silence, Triumph, or Despair: 

Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why: 
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where. 



Page 32 FITZGERALD VERSION 

I tell you this — When, started from the Goal, 
Over the flaming shoulders of the Foal 

Of Heav'n Parwin and Mushtari they flung, 
In my predestin'd Plot of Dust and Soul 

The Vine had struck a fibre: which about 
If clings my Being — let the Dervish flout; 

Of my Base metal may be filed a Key, 
That shall unlock the Door he howls without. 



And this I know : whether the one True Light 
Kindle to Love, or Wrath-consume me quite, 

One Flash of It within the Tavern caught 
Better than in the Temple lost outright. 

What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke 
A conscious Something to resent the yoke 

Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain 
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke! 

What! from his helpless Creature be repaid 
Pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allay'd — 

Sue for a Debt we never did contract, 
And cannot answer — Oh the sorry trade! 

Oh Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin 
Beset the Road I was to wander in, 

Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round 
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin! 

Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make, 
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake: 

For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man 
Is blacken'd — Man's forgiveness give — and take! 



N 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 33 

As under cover of departing Day 
Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazan away, 

Once more within the Potter's house alone 
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay. 

Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small, 
That stood along the floor and by the wall ; 

And some loquacious Vessels were; and some 
Listen'd perhaps, but never talk'd at all. 

Said one among them — "Surely not in vain 
"My substance of the common Earth was ta'en 

"And to this Figure moulded, to be broke, 
"Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again." 

Then said a Second — "Ne'er a peevish Boy 

"Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy; 

"And He that with his hand the Vessel made 
"Will surely not in after Wrath destroy." 

After a momentary silence spake 
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make; 

"They sneer at me for leaning all awry: 
"What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?" 

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot — 
I think a Sufi pipkin — waxing hot — 

"All this of Pot and Potter— Tell me then, 
"Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?" 

"Why," said another, "Some there are who tell 
"Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell 

"The luckless Pots he marr'd in making — Pish! 
"He's a Good Fellow, and 't will all be well." 



Page 34 FITZGERALD VERSION 

"Well," murmur'd one, "Let whoso make or buy, 
"My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry: 
"But fill me with the old familiar Juice, 
"Methinks I might recover by and by. 

So while the Vessels one by one were speaking, 
The little Moon look'd in that all were seeking : 

And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother! 
"Now for the Porter's shoulder-knot a-creaking !" 

Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide, 

And wash the Body whence the Life has died, 

And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf, 

By some not unfrequented Garden-side. 
/ 



That ev'n my buried Ashes such a snare 
Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air 

As not a True-believer passing by 
But shall be overtaken unaware. 

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long 

Have done my credit in this World much wrong: 

Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup, 
And sold my Reputation for a Song. 

Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before 
I swore — but was I sober when I swore? 

And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand 
My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore. 

And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel, 
And robb'd me of my Robe of Honour — Well, 

I wonder often what the Vintners buy 
One half so precious as the stuff they sell. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 35 

Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! 
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close! 

The Nightingale that in the branches sang, 
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows! 

Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield 
One glimpse — if dimly, yet indeed, reveal'd, 

To which the fainting Traveller might spring, 
As springs the trampled herbage of the field! 

Would but some winged Angel ere too late 
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate, 

And make the stern Recorder otherwise 
Enregister, or quite obliterate! 

Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire 
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, 
Would not we shatter it to bits — and then 
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire! 






\l 






^ 



^ 



PART II 



\ 



^ 



^JZ- 



Richard Le Gallienne ' s 
Version of the 

Stobatgat 

of 

©mar IKbaggam 



(The compiler accords sincerest appreciation and thanks to Mr. Richard Le 
Gallienne for his permission to use the few following quatrains selected 
from his volume of "Rubaiyat.") 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 43 



Sttbatijat of <®mar KJfaijjjattt 



Yea ! 'tis the morn ! and like a morning star 
The Sultan's palace glitters from afar, 

No false mirage of morning, phantom-fair, 
But blue-eyed day throned on his diamond car. 

Awake! my soul, and haste betimes to drink, 
This sun that rises all too soon shall sink, — 

Come, come, O vintner, ope thy drowsy door! 
We die of thirst upon the fountain's brink. 

Youth, like a magic bird, has flown away, 
He sang a little morning-hour in May, 

Sang to the Rose, his love, that too is gone — 
Whither is more than you or I can say. 

Within the haunted wine-cup more than wine 
It is that makes a mortal man divine, 

We seek a drink more deadly and more strange 
Than ever grew on any earthly vine. 

The wine-cup is a wistful magic glass, 
Wherein all day old faces smile and pass, 

Dead lips press ours upon its scented brim, 
Old voices whisper many a sweet 'alas!' 



Page 44 LE CALLIENNE VERSION 

Would you forget a woman, drink red wine; 
Would you remember her, then drink red wine! 

Is your heart breaking just to see her face? 
Gaze deep within this mirror of red wine. 

Within the tavern each man is a king, 
Wine is the slave that brings him — anything; 

O friend, be wise in time and join our band, 
Drink and forget, and laugh and dance and sing. 

Only a breath divides belief from doubt, 
'Tis muttered breath that makes a man devout, 
Yea, death from life only a breath divides — 
O haste to drink before that breath is out. 

Think not that I have never tried your way 
To heaven, you who pray and fast and pray: 
Once I denied myself both love and wine — 
Yea, wine and love — for a whole summer day. 

This is no way my learned life to use! 
Tell me a better, then, that I may choose. 

Shall I for some remote imagined gain 
My precious little hour of living lose? 

And to my solitude sometimes I bring 
A gracious shape to sit with me and sing, 

Losing, to find, myself in her deep eyes — 
Ah! then I ask no other earthly thing. 

Good friends, beware! the only life we know 
Flies from us like an arrow from the bow, 

The caravan of life is moving by, 
Quick! to your places in the passing show. 



RVBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 45 

Set not thy heart on any good or gain, 

Life means but pleasure, or it means but pain; 

When Time lets slip a little perfect hour, 
O take it — for it will not come again. 

For spring is here, with all his ancient fires, 

Quick with old dreams, and thrilled with new desires; 

Vowed to repent, yet sure to sin again — 
O leave repentance to your withered sires! 

O listen, love, how all the builders sing! 

O sap! O song! O green world blossoming! 

White as the hand of Moses blooms the thorn, 
Sweet as the breath of Jesus comes the spring. 

^Spring, with the cuckoo-sob deep in his throat, 
O'er all the land his thrilling whispers float, 

Old earth believes his ancient lies once more, 
And runs to meet him in a golden coat. 

And many a lovely girl that long hath lain 
Beneath the grass, out in the sun and rain, 
Lifts up a daisied head to hear him sing, 
Hearkens a little, smiles, and sleeps again. 
r 
Yea, love, this very ground you lightly tread, 

Who knows! is pillow to some maiden's head; 

Ah, tread upon it lightly, lest you wake 
The sacred slumber of the happy dead. 

O love, how green the world, how blue the sky ! 
And we are living — living — you and I ! 

Ah, when the sun shines and our love is near, 
'Tis good to live, and very hard to die. 



Page 46 LE CALLIENNE VERSION 

Beautiful wheel of blue above my head, 
Will you be turning still when I am dead? 

Were you still turning long before I came? — 
O bitter thought to take with me to bed. 

Once in a garden this advice I heard, 

It was the Nightingale, the Rose's bird,— 

He left the Rose, to hurry in my ear: 
"It is our only chance, you take my word." 

For, have you thought how short a time is ours? 
Only a little longer than the flowers, 

Here in the meadow just a summer's day, 
Only to-day; to-morrow — other flowers. 

The stream of life runs ah ! so swiftly by, 

A gleaming race 'twixt bank and bank— -we fly, 

Faces alight and little trailing songs, 
Then plunge into the gulf, and so good-bye. 

Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way: 
Heed not TO-MORROW, heed not YESTERDAY; 

The magic words of life are HERE and NOW— 
O fools, that after some to-morrow stray! 

Were I a Sultan, say what greater bliss 
Were mine to summon to my side than this, — 

Dear gleaming face, far brighter than the moon! 
O Love! and this immortalizing kiss. 

To all of us the thought of heaven is dear — 
Why not be sure of it and make it here? 
No doubt there is a heaven yonder too, 
But 'tis so far away — and you are near. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 47 

Of all my seeking this is all my gain: 
No agony of any mortal brain 

Shall wrest the secret of the life of man; 
The Search has taught me that the Search is vain. 

Look not above, there is no answer there; 
Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer; 

NEAR is as near to God as any FAR, 
And HERE is just the same deceit as THERE. 

But here are wine and beautiful young girls, 
Be wise and hide your sorrows in their curls, 

Dive as you will in life's mysterious sea, 
You shall not bring us any better pearls. 

So since with all my passion and my skill, 
The world's mysterious meaning mocks me still, 

Shall I not piously believe that I 
Am kept in darkness by the heavenly will? 

So I be written in the Book of Love, 
I have no care about that book above; 

Erase my name, or write it, as you please — 
So I be written in the Book of Love. 

"Did God set grapes a-growing, do you think 
And at the same time make it sin to drink? 

Give thanks to HIM who foreordained it thus — 
Surely HE loves to hear the glasses clink!" 

If 'tis a sin to drink the yellow wine, 
The sin is surely His, not thine or mine; 

Fated to drink, how dare I disobey — 
And bring to nought the prophecy divine! 



Page 48 LE CALLIENNE VERSION 

Eternal torment some sour wits foretell 
For those who follow wine and love too well, — 
Fear not, for God were left alone in Heaven 
If all the lovely lovers burnt in hell. 

In my left hand I hold the Koran tight, 
And grasp the wine-cup firmly in my right — 

Thus do I stand beneath the eye of heaven, 
Not quite a saint, nor yet a sinner quite. 

Who set this wine-cup in my willing way? 
Who made this woman of enchanted clay? 

When gods decree such difficult commands, 
They should give too the power to obey. 



If I were God, I would not wait the years 
To solve the mystery of human tears ; 

And, unambiguous, I would speak my will, 
Nor hint it darkly to the dreaming seers. 

Would we were sure of some oasis blest, 
Where, the long journey over, we might rest; 

O just to sleep a hundred thousand years, 
Tired head, tired heart, within the earth's dark breast! 

The soul is but the senses catching fire, 
Marvellous music of the body's lyre, — 

The angel senses are the silver strings 
Stirred by the breath of some unknown desire. 

I would not change the song the flute-girl sings 
For all the diadems of weary kings, 

His joys the Sultan shares with all the world, 
His cares he keeps — a chain of glittering rings. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 49 

Have I not wine, and love to drink with me, 
A garden and a gracious company 

Of sweet-faced dancers, and the rising moon? — 
This is the happy half of sovereignty. 

If in this shadowland of life thou hast 
Found one true heart to love thee, hold it fast ; 

Love it again, give all to keep it thine, 
For love like nothing in the world can last. 

Allah, that numbers all my whitening hairs, 
Knows, without telling, all my little cares; 

Grateful is Allah, he will not forget 
I have not wearied Him with endless prayers. 

Forgetful unforgotten, I have found 

No face again like thine, nor thy profound 

Sad eyes again, nor heard in all the world 
As thy blest voice again so sweet a sound, 

"Where are the fair old faces gone a-hiding? 
Where is the far-off place of their abiding?** 

I asked the wise, and thus the wise to me: 
** Drink, they are gone— and there is never a tiding." 

Yet think not wine is wisdom for the fool, 
'Tis but the wise should follow wisdom's rule; 
The sot, the brawler, and the ugly-tongued — 
Believe not these of gentle Khayyam's school. 

This tavern-wisdom was not made for all, 
The congregation of the great is small, 

Drink not with every wine-flown Hatim Tai, 
Nor lift thy cup to every noisy call. 



Page 50 LE CALLIENNE VERSION 

True wine has many meanings more than wine, 
True wine will even warn us against wine — 

Any intoxication of the soul, 
Yea! or the senses, is the angel Wine. 

In all those star-cold heavens shall we find 
Another home, so safe, so green and kind? 

O gentle earth, methinks my heart will break 
At the mere thought of leaving you behind. 

If only somewhere at the journey's end 
Friend might again behold the face of friend! 

Very forgetful of us grow the dead, 
That never yet a word or whisper send. 

Love, the fair day is drawing to its close, 
The stars are rising, and a soft wind blows, 

The gates of heaven are opening in a dream — 
The nightingale sings to the sleeping rose. 

Heart of my heart, in such an hour as this 
The cup of life brims all too full of bliss, 

See, it runs over in these happy tears — 
How strange you seem! how solemn is your kiss! 

This is my heart's desire when all is over: 
To be the wine-cup of some dreaming lover, 
Into his wine a far-off sweetness steal, — 
And — who can tell? — the wine might me recover. 



■ ■ ■ 









**& i 




PART III 






A 



Page 55 



g>tr Strljarii Hfmtxtia Uttrtfltu 



SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON, K. C. M. G., was born in 
Hertforshire, England, March 19, 1821. His father intended 
him for the church, and in consequence he spent a year at 
Oxford. But evincing no clerical tendencies, he readily 
found his future lay in the Indian army and consular service. As 
early as '42 began the interesting years of acquiring his wonderful 
knowledge of Hindustani and various extensive Mohammedan 
languages and usages which later proved of unlimited service to 
him. England saw him frequently and his military duties proved 
no hindrance to the early publication of several books on native 
subjects. In '53 came his marvellous and dangerous visit in dis- 
guise to the sacred cities of Islam. A lengthy account of his 
Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah was published in '55. Then 
shortly came his penetrating journey to Lake Tanganyika in Cen- 
tral Africa. North and South America, and other southern 
"Ultima Thule" were explored, and unfailingly an enthusiastic 
public was kept well informed, through the medium of his fluent 
pen, of these wonderful exploits and expeditions. 

Among his literary achievements "The Kasidah" stands pre- 
eminent. We have positive proof that the material from which the 
"Kasidah" was drawn had been in immature shape years before; 
but the birth of the "Kasidah" was on the fourth morning, at 
day-break of his trip to Meccah. 

These few lines following in brief analysis, may prove of 
interest regarding "The Kasidah" itself. 

Haji Abdu takes leave of the Caravan setting out for Meccah; 
he sees the "Wolf's tail" the dawn-light accompanied by the morn- 
ing-breath, which Moslem physiologists suppose to be the early 
prayer offered by Nature to the First Cause. Then the great and 



Page 56 

terrible wilderness and at last Allah's Holy Hill, which is Arafat, 
near Meccah. 

The first section concludes with a keene lament that "the meet- 
ings of this world take place upon the highway of separation." 

The chill of sorrow numbs my thoughts: methinks 

I hear the passing knell; 
As dies across yon thin blue line the tinkling of the 
Camel-bell. 
In the next section is quoted the various aspects under which 
Life appears to the wise and foolish teachers of mankind. First 
come lines from Hafix; then follows Umar-i- Khayyam. And in 
the latter connection we find "Wine" used in its mystic sense of 
entranced Love for the Soul of Souls. Umar was despised and 
held in awe because he spoke boldly when his brethren the Sufis 
dealt in innuendoes. A few more direct quotations and lastly we 
interpret the "one long wail over the contraditions, the mysteries, 
the dark end, the infinite sorrowfulness of all existence, and the 
arcanum of grief which Luther says, underlies all life." 

Authorities for all these theories are found in detail. For 
instance — Buddah, whom the Catholic Church converted to Saint 
Josephat, and who refused to recognize "the deity" on account of 
the mystery of the "cruelty of things." Schopenhauer, that model 
pessimist, who at the humblest distance personifies Buddah in the 
world of Western thought — he, found the vision of man's unhappi- 
ness so overpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be 
malevolent, "heartless, cowardly and arrogant." Confucius, the 
"throneless King — more powerful than all kings," even he was 
denied a personal deity. It is the Epicurean idea which rules the 
China of the present day; and the general language of man in the 
Turanian East is "God is great, but he lives too far off." 

Our Haji obviously held that 'idolatry began with a personal 
deity, tho the latter is denied by the 'Thirty-nine articles' with 
whom God is a Being without Personality or Passions " He does 
profess a somewhat loose agnosticism and attributes popular faith 
to the fact that — "every religion is without exception, the child of 
fear and ignorance" (Carl Vogt). His idols are the illusions of 
Bacon, having "their foundations in the very constitution of man." 



Page 57 

Aristotle was as great a subverter as Alexander; but the 
Stagyrite of the Dark Ages, who ruled the world until the 13th 
century, became the "twice execrable" of Martin Luther, and was 
finally abolished by Galileo and Newton. For instance — 
Theories for truths, fable for fact; system for 

science vex the thought 
Life's one great lesson you despise — to knozv that 
all we know is nought. 
In fact—, 

The most we know is nothing can be known. 

And he further asserts that — there is no Good and no Evil in 
the absolute sense as man has made them. With Pope he is one: 
And spite of pride, in erring nature's spite 
One truth is clear — whatever is, is right. 

And it might just as well read (for the inverse is equally as 
true) — 

And spite of pride in erring nature's song 
One truth is clear, whatever is, is wrong. 

The three ages of the Buddhists he emphatically denies: the 
wholly happy; the happy mixed with misery, and the miserable 
tinged with happiness, — the present. He argues against the popular 
idea that man has caused the misery of this world, by citing the 
ages, when Old Red Sandstone bred gigantic cannibal fishes, and 
when the Oolites produced the reptile serpents of air, sea and earth. 

We find he answers the modern philosopher whose soul was 
overwhelmed by the marvel and the awe of two things, "The starry 
heaven above and the moral law within," by declaring Conscience 
to be a geographical and chronological accident! 

A commonplace of the age — in the West as well as the East — 
is that Science is confined to phenomena and cannot reach the things 
themselves. With all its pretentions it simply means that there can 
be conceived things in themselves; — that we know them to exist, 
and, at the same time that we cannot know what they are. But 
who dares say "cannot?" Who can measure man's work — when 
he shall be as superior to our present selves as we are to the cave- 
man of past time? 



Page 58 

This Pilgrim — as do most Easterns — confuses the contra- 
'dictories, in which one term stands for something and the other 
for nothing — with the contraries in which both terms express a 
something. Further we find the Pilgrim advancing the end with 
the favorite Sufi tenet — "that the five (six?) senses are the doors 
of all human knowledge. And that no type of man, incarnation 
of the deity, prophet, apostle or sage, has ever produced an idea 
not conceived within his brain by the operation of these vulgar 
material agents." 

He points out that "God is a racial expression ; a pedagogue 
on the Nile, an abstraction in India" and that thus does man depict 
himself in his God. The God of the Hebrews he brands with 
cruelty. The charming creations of Greek fancy which regard 
all matter everywhere alive, while not attributing a moral nature 
to the deity — these he has meditated upon. 

Our Unitarianism is vastly different; Theology with its One 
Creator; Pantheism with its "One Spirit's plastic stress," and 
Science with its one Energy. Christianity and its "trinal God" 
he has expressed as — "a riddle" (some readers may be offended!) 
All other doubts the Moslem mind can seemingly overcome, but 
not this Christian Trinitarianism. Of Islamism he is no devotee, — 
which like Christianity has its ascetic Hebraism and its Hellenic 
Hedonism. The big world of thought moves between these two 
extremes. 

Again is asked that old, old question — What is truth? and 
answering himself after the fashion of the wise Emperor of China, 
our Pilgrim replies, "Truth hath not an unchanging name." Plato 
and Aristotle are cited — as is usual with Eastern songsters who 
delight in logic. Our Haji denounces — "compound ignorance" and 
holds that all knowledge has been developed by overthrowing error. 
There are things which human Reason or Instinct matured, in its 
undeveloped state, cannot master; but Reason is a Law to itself. 
Therefore we are not bound to believe in or attempt belief in, any- 
thing which is contrary to Reason. Rome said — "Do not appeal 
to History; that is private judgment. Do not appeal to Holy Writ; 
that is heresy. Do not appeal to Reason; that is Rationalism." 

For an intellectual being, this present life, he holds to be all 
sufficient, and therefore there can be no want of a Heaven, or a 



Page 59 

Hell. When all are pure, what need is there for a Hell? More- 
over according to the ancient Buddhist theory — Happiness and 
Misery being equally divided among men and beasts, some enjoy 
much and suffer much, others the reverse. As Diderot declares: 
''Sober passions produce only the commonplace — the man of 
moderate passion lives and dies like a brute." 

And of Regret — which is Repentance — it was "one of the forty- 
two deadly sins of the Ancient Egyptians." 

Here let us end the Haji's study of mankind; for after all, in 
the wisdom of Pope — "all our knowledge is ourselves to know." 

His "Arabian Nights," and the almost completed, but fated 
"Scented Garden" — these filled a life overflowing with activity, and 
were the result of his untiring efforts. These, the pearls strung 
together for the adornment of his future disciples! 

So it came to pass, that Sir Richard Francis Burton, one of the 
celebrities of the early sixties, one whose fame was kindled by his 
strong deeds, so justly and fairly performed, passed out into the 
unknown, at Triest, October 20, 1890. 

Justin McCarthy, who first met and knew Sir Richard Francis 
Burton at a club made up of rising young authors and journalists 
in Fleet Street, writes most interestingly of him* 

An interval elapsed before they met again and Mr. McCarthy 
remarks "that a very great change was noticeable in Burton." "At 
this time," McCarthy continues: "I had the good fortune to meet 
Lady Burton, the gifted, charming and devoted wife, whose in- 
fluence had such a refining and ennobling effect on Burton's temper 
and manners. The genius, the intellectual power, the unfailing 
variety of thoughts and expressions — these were the same, but the 
Burton of latter days had grown more kindly and considerate, and 
patient of others opinions." In conclusion he says : "The fates were 
never more kindly than when they allowed that devoted woman to 

*To use Mr. McCarthy's own words: "Richard Burton was exactly the 
type of man one might have expected to meet if one had read all the 
wonderful stories told, and truly told of his adventures and travels. Full 
of irrepressible energy and the power of domination, he was quick in his 
movements, rapid in his talk, never wanted for a word or an argument, 
was impatient of differing opinion, and seemingly could not help making 
himself the dictator of any assembly. His powers of description were mar- 
vellous, he could recite a poem, or rattle off a song, could flash out jest 
after jest, and always with perfect good humour. It was impossible not to 
admire him and to be greatly impressed." 



Page 60 



watch by Burton to the last. I have many bright recollections 
of the Burtons and their friendliness to me and mine" 

McCarthy's son was a great lover and student of Oriental history 
and literature, and Burton gave him of his most generous help in 
his efforts along these lines. Later young McCarthy worked with 
Lady Burton in the preparation of a condensed edition of Burton's 
"Arabian Nights"; the edition adapted to the study and enjoy- 
ment of the younger generation. 




^ 



Sir Richard Francis Burton 





/ 



THE KAS1DAH Page 65 



®fy? SCamfoalf 




The hour is nigh ; the waning Queen walks 

forth to rule the later night; 
Crown'd with the sparkle of a Star, and 

throned on orb of ashen light : 

The Wolf-tail sweeps the paling East to 

leave a deeper gloom behind, 
And Dawn uprears her shining head, sighing 

with semblance of a wind: 

The highlands catch yon Orient gleam, while 
purpling still the lowlands lie; 

And pearly mists, the morning-pride, soar 
incense-like to greet the sky. 

The horses neigh, the camels groan, the 
torches gleam, the cressets flare; 

The town of canvas falls, and man with din 
and dint invadeth air: 

The Golden Gates swing right and left ; up 
springs the Sun with flamy brow; 

The dew-cloud melts in gush of light; brown 
Earth is bathed in morning-glow. 



Page 66 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

Slowly they wind athwart the wild, and while 

young Day his anthem swells, 
Sad falls upon my yearning ear the tinkling 

of the Camel-bells: 

O'er fiery waste and frozen wold, o'er horrid 

hill and gloomy glen, 
The home of grisly beast and Ghoul, the 

haunts of wilder, grislier men; — 

With the brief gladness of the Palms, that 

tower and sway o'er seething plain, 
Fraught with the thoughts of rustling shade, 

and welling spring, and rushing rain; 



With the short solace of the ridge, by gentle 

zephyrs played upon, 
Whose breezy head and bosky side front 

seas of cooly celadon; — 

'T is theirs to pass with joy and hope, whose 

souls shall ever thrill and fill 
Dreams of the Birthplace and the Tomb, — 

visions of Allah's Holy Hill. 

But we? Another shift of scene, another 

pang to rack the heart; 
Why meet we on the bridge of Time to 

'change one greeting and to part? 

We meet to part; yet asks my sprite, Part 

we to meet? Ah! is it so? 
Man's fancy-made Omniscience knows who 

made Omniscience nought can know. 



THE KASIDAH Page 67 

Why must we meet, why must we part, why 

must we bear this yoke of MUST, 
Without our leave or askt or given, by tyrant 

Fate on victim thrust? 

That Eve so gay, so bright, so glad, this 

Morn so dim, and sad, and grey; 
Strange that life's Registrar should write 

this day a day, that day a day! 



Mine eyes, my brain, my heart, are sad, — 

sad is the very core of me; 
All wearies, changes, passes, ends; alas! the 

Birthday's injury! 

Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply 

some day we meet again; 
Yet ne'er the selfsame men shall meet ; the 

years shall make us other men: 

The light of morn has grown to noon, has 
paled with eve, and now farewell ! 

Go, vanish from my Life as dies the tinkling 
of the Camel's bell. 



^ 



Page 68 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

In these drear wastes of sea-born land, these 

wilds where none may dwell but He, 
What visionary Pasts revive, what process 

of the Years we see: 

Gazing beyond the thin blue line that rims 

the far horizon-ring, 
Our sadden'd sight why haunt these ghosts, 

whence do these spectral shadows spring? 

"What endless questions vex the thought, of 
Whence and Whither, When and How? 

What fond and foolish strife to read the 
Scripture writ on human brow; 

As stand we percht on point of Time, 

betwixt the two Eternities, 
Whose awful secrets gathering round with 

black profound oppress our eyes. 

"This gloomy night, these grisly waves, these 
winds and whirlpools loud and dread: 

What reck they of our wretched plight who 
Safety's shore so lightly tread?" 

Thus quoth the Bard of Love and Wine, 

whose dream of Heaven ne'er could rise 

Beyond the brimming Kausar-cup and Houris 
with the white-black eyes; 

Ah me! my race of threescore years is short, 

but long enough to pall 
My sense with joyless joys as these, with 

Love and Houris, Wine and all. 



THE KASTDAH Page 69 

Another boasts he would divorce old barren 

Reason from his bed. 
And wed the Vine-maid in her stead; — fools 

who believe a word he said ! 

And " 'Dust thou art to dust returning,' 

ne'er was spoke of human soul" 
The Soofi cries, 't is well for him that hath 

such gift to ask its goal. 

"And this is all, for this we're born to weep 

a little and to die!" 
So sings the shallow bard whose life still 

labours at the letter "I." 

"Ear never heard, Eye never saw the bliss of 

those who enter in 
My heavenly kingdom," Isa said, who wailed 

our sorrows and our sin: 

Too much of words or yet too few ! What 

to thy Godhead easier than 
One little glimpse of Paradise to ope the 

eyes and ears of man? 

"I am the Truth! I am the Truth!" we hear 

the God-drunk gnostic cry 
"The microcosm abides in ME; Eternal 

Allah's nought but I!" 

Mansiir was wise, but wiser they who smote 

him with the hurled stones; 
And, though his blood a witness bore, no 

wisdom-might could mend his bones. 



Page 70 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

"Eat, drink, and sport; the rest of life's not 

worth a fillip," quoth the King; 
Methinks the saying saith too much: the 

swine would say the selfsame thing! 

Two-footed beasts that browse through life, 

by Death to serve as soil design'd, 
Bow prone to Earth whereof they be, and 

there the proper pleasures find: 

But you of finer, nobler stuff, ye, whom to 

Higher leads the High, 
What binds your hearts in common bond 

with creatures of the stall and sty? 

"In certain hope of Life-to-come I journey 

through this shifting scene" 
The Zahid snarls and saunters down his 

Vale of Tears with confident mien. 

Wiser than Amran's Son art thou, who 

ken'st so well the world-to-be, 
The Future when the Past is not, the Present 

merest dreamery; 

What know'st thou, man, of Life? and yet, 

for ever 'twixt the womb, the grave, 
Thou pratest of the Coming Life, of Heav'n 

and Hell thou fain must rave. 

The world is old and thou art young; the 

world is large and thou art small; 
Cease, atom of a moment's span, to hold 

thyself an All-in- All! 

***** 



THE KAS1DAH Page 71 

Fie, fie ! you visionary things, ye motes 

that dance in sunny glow, 
Who base and build Eternities on briefest 

moment here below ; 

Who pass through Life like caged birds, the 

captives of a despot will ; 
Still wond'ring How and When and Why, and 

Whence and Whither, wond'ring still; 

Still wond'ring how the Marvel came because 

two coupling mammals chose 
To slake the thirst of fleshly love, and thus 

the "Immortal Being" rose; 

Wond'ring the Babe with staring eyes, per- 
force compel'd from night to day, 

Gript in the giant grasp of Life like gale- 
borne dust or wind-wrung spray ; 

Who comes imbecile to the world 'mid double 

danger, groans, and tears; 
The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of 

passions, error, wrath and fears; 

Who knows not Whence he came nor Why, 
who kens not Whither bound and When, 

Yet such is Allah's choicest gift, the blessing 
dreamt by foolish men ; 

Who step by step perforce returns to couth- 
less youth, wan, white and cold, 

Lisping again his broken words till all the 
tale be fully told: 



Page 72 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

Wond'ring the Babe with quenched orbs, an 

oldster bow'd by burthening years, 
How 'scaped the skiff an hundred storms; how 

'scaped the thread a thousand shears; 

How coming to the Feast unbid, he found 

the gorgeous table spread 
With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit, with 

stones that bear the shape of bread: 

V %. 

How Life was nought but ray of sun that 

clove the darkness thick and blind, 
The ravings of the reckless storm, the 

shrieking of the rav'ening wind; 



/■ 




How lovely visions 'guiled his sleep, aye 
fading with the break of morn, 

Till every sweet became a sour, till every 
rose became a thorn; 

Till dust and ashes met his eyes wherever 

turned their saddened gaze; 
The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the 

rubbish of his wasted days; 

How every high heroic Thought that longed 

to breathe empyrean air, 
Failed of its feathers, fell to earth, and 

perisht of a sheer despair; 

How, dower'd with heritage of brain, whose 

might has split the solar ray, 
His rest is grossest coarsest earth, a crown 

of gold on brow of clay; 



THE KAS1DAH Page T± 

This House whose frame be flesh and bone, 
mortar'd with blood and faced with skin, 

The home of sickness, dolours, age; unclean 
without, impure within: 

Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom, the cham- 
bers haunted by the Ghost, 

Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade 
stronger than all the heav'nly host. 

This tube, an enigmatic pipe, whose end was 

laid before begun, 
That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks; 

— puzzle, machine, automaton; 

The first of Pots the Potter made by Chrysor- 

rhoas' blue-green wave ; 
Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon 

to the world he gave! 

How Life is dim, unreal, vain, like scenes 

that round the drunkard reel; 
How "Being" meaneth not to be; to see 

and hear, smell, taste and feel. 

A drop in Ocean's boundless tide, unfathom'd 

waste of agony; 
Where millions live their horrid lives by 

making other millions die. 

How with a heart that would through love, 

to Universal Love aspire, 
Man woos infernal chance to smite, as 

Min'arets draw the Thunder-fire. 



Page 74 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

How Earth on Earth builds tow'er and wall, 

to crumble at a touch of Time; 
How Earth on Earth from Shinar-plain the 

heights of Heaven fain would climb. 

How short this Life, how long withal; how 

false its weal, how true its woes, 
This fever-fit with paroxysms to mark its 

opening and its close. 

Ah! gay the day with shine of sun, and bright 

the breeze, and blithe the throng 
Met on the River-bank to play, when I was 

young, when I was young: 

Such general joy could never fade; and yet 

the chilling whisper came 
One face had paled, one form had failed; had 

fled the bank, had swum the stream ; 

Still revellers danced, and sang, and trod the 

hither bank of Time's deep tide, 
Still one by one they left and fared to the 

far misty thither side; 

And now the last hath slipt away yon drear 

Death-desert to explore, 
And now one Pilgrim worn and lorn still 

lingers on the lonely shore. 

Yes, Life in youth-tide standeth still ; in 

Manhood streameth soft and slow; 
See, as it nears the 'abysmal goal how fleet 

the waters flash and flow! 



THE KAS1DAH Page 75 

And Deaths are twain; the Deaths we see 

drop like the leaves in windy Fall; 
But ours, our own, are ruined worlds, a globe 

collapst, last end of all. 

We live our lives with rogues and fools, 

dead and alive, alive and dead, 
We die 'twixt one who feels the pulse and 

one who frets and clouds the head : 

And, — oh, the Pity! — hardly conned the 

lesson comes its fatal term ; 
Fate bids us bundle up our books, and bear 

them bod'ily to the worm: 

Hardly we learn to wield the blade before 

the wrist grows stiff and old; 
Hardly we learn to ply the pen ere Thought 

and Fancy faint with cold: 

Hardly we find the path of love, to sink the 

Self, forget the "I," 
When sad suspicion grips the heart, when 

Man, the Man begins to die: 

Hardly we scale the wisdom-heights, and 

sight the Pisgah-scene around, 
And breathe the breath of heav'enly air, and 

hear the Spheres' harmonious sound; 

When swift the Camel-rider spans the howl- 
ing waste, by Kismet sped, 

And of his Magic Wand a wave hurries the 
quick to join the dead. 



Page 76 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

How sore the burden, strange the strife; 

how full of splendour, wonder, fear; 
Life, atom of that Infinite Space that 

stretcheth 'twixt the Here and There. 

How Thought is imp'otent to divine the 

secret which the gods defend, 
The Why of birth and life and death, that 

Isis-veil no hand may rend. 

Eternal Morrows make our Day ; our Is is 

aye to be till when 
Night closes in ; *t is all a dream, and yet we 

die,— and then and THEN? 

And still the Weaver plies his loom, whose 

warp and woof is wretched Man 
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design, so dark 

we doubt it owns a plan. 

\ */ v\ 

Dost not, O Maker, blush to hear, amid the 

storm of tears and blood, 
Man say Thy mercy made what is, and saw 

the made and said 't was good? 

The marvel is that man can smile dreaming 

his ghostly ghastly dream ; — 
Better the heedless atomy that buzzes in the 

morning beam! 

O the dread pathos of our lives ! how durst 

thou, Allah, thus to play 
With Love, Affection, Friendship, all that 

shows the god in mortal clay? 




THE KASIDAH 



Page 11 



But ah ! what 'vaileth man to mourn ; shall 

tears bring forth what smiles ne'er brought; 

Shall brooding breed a thought of joy? Ah 
hush the sigh, forget the thought! 

Silence thine immemorial quest, contain thy 

nature's vain complaint 
None heeds, none cares for thee or thine; — 

like thee how many came and went? 

Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail ; 

enjoy thy shining hour of sun; 
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the 

dance less full of fun? 

***** 







Page 78 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

What Truths hath gleaned that Sage 

consumed by many a moon that waxt and waned? 
What Prophet-strain be his to sing? What 

hath his old Experience gained? 

There is no God, no man-made God; a 

bigger, stronger, crueller man; 
Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere 

Thought, the life of Life, began. 

Right quoth the Hindu Prince of old, "An 

Ishwara for one I nill, 
Th' almighty everlasting Good who cannot 

'bate th' Eternal 111:" 

"Your gods may be, what shows they are?" 

Hear China's Perfect Sage declare ; 
"And being, what to us be they who dwell 

so darkly and so far?" 

"All matter hath a birth and death: 't is 

made, unmade and made anew; 
"We choose to call the Maker 'God :'— 

such is the Zahid's owly view. 

"You changeful finite Creatures strain" 

(rejoins the Drawer of the Wine) 
"The dizzy depths of Infinite Power to 

fathom with your foot of twine ;" 

"Poor idols of man's heart and head with 

the Divine Idea to blend; 
"To preach as 'Nature's Common Course' 

what any hour may shift or end." 



THE KAS1DAH Page 79 

"How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught 

of the Showman or the Show? 
"Why meanly bargain to believe, which only 

means thou ne'er canst know? 

"How may the passing Now contain the 

standing Now — Eternity? — 
"An endless is without a was, the be and 

never the to-be? 

"Who made your Maker? If Self-made, 

why fare so far to fare the worse 
"Sufficeth not a world of worlds, a self-made 

chain of universe? 

"Grant an Idea, Primal Cause, the Causing 

Cause, why crave for more? 
"Why strive its depth and breadth to mete, 

to trace its work, its aid to 'implore? 

"Unknown, Incomprehensible, whate'er you 

choose to call it, call ; 
"But leave it vague as airy space, dark in 

its darkness mystical. 

"Your childish fears would seek a Sire, by 

the non-human God defin'd, 
"What your five wits may wot ye weet ; 

what is you please to dub 'design'd ;' 

"You bring down Heav'en to vulgar Earth; 

your Maker like yourselves you make, 
"You quake to own a reign of Law, you 

pray the Law its laws to break ; 



Page 80 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

"You pray, but hath your thought e'er weighed 

how empty vain the prayer must be, 
"That begs a boon already giv'en, or craves 

a change of Law to see? 

"Say, Man, deep learned in the Scheme that 

orders mysteries sublime, 
"How came it this was Jesus, that was Judas 

from the birth of Time? 

"How I the tiger, thou the lamb ; again the 

Secret, prithee, show 
"Who slew the slain, bowman or bolt or 

Fate that drave the man, the bow? 



^ 



"Man worships self : his God is Man; the 

struggling of the mortal mind 
"To form its model as 't would be, the perfect 

of itself to find. 

V\ / 

"The God became sage, priest and scribe 

where Nilus' serpent made the vale ; 
"A gloomy Brahm in glowing Ind, a neutral 
something cold and pale: 

"Amid the high Chaldean hills a moulder of 

the heavenly spheres; 
"On Guebre steppes the Timeless-God who 

governs by his dual peers: 

"In Hebrew tents the Lord that led His 

leprous slaves to fight and jar; 
"Yahveh, Adon or Elohim, the God that 

smites, the Man of War. 



THE KAS1DAH Page 81 

"The lovely Gods of lib'ertine Greece, those 

fair and frail humanities 
"Whose homes o'erlook'd the Middle Sea, 

where all Earth's beauty cradled lies, 

"Ne'er left its blessed bounds, nor sought 

the barb'arous climes of barb'arous gods 

"Where Odin of the dreary North o'er hog 
and sickly mead-cup nods: 

"And when, at length, 'Great Pan is dead' 

uprose the loud and dol'orous cry 
"A glamour wither'd on the ground, a 

splendour faded in the sky. 




"Yea, Pan was dead, the Nazar'ene came 
and seized his seat beneath the sun, 

"The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one 
is three and three is one; 

// i v\ 

"Whose sadd'ening creed of herited Sin 
spilt o'er the world its cold grey spell; 

"In every vista showed a grave, and 'neath 
the grave the glare of Hell; 

Till all Life's Po'esy sinks to prose; romance 

to dull Real'ity fades; 
"Earth's flush of gladness pales in gloom 

and God again to man degrades. 

"Then the lank Arab foul with sweat, the 

drainer of the camel's dug, 
"Gorged with his leek-green lizard's meat, 

clad in his filthy rag and rug, 



Page 82 5m RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

"Bore his fierce Allah o'er his sands and 

broke, like lava-burst upon 
"The realms where reigned pre-Adamite 

Kings, where rose the Grand Kayanian throne. 

"Who now of ancient Kayomurs, of Zal or 

Rustam cares to sing, 
"Whelmed by the tempest of the tribes that 

called the Camel-driver King? 

"Where are the crown of Kay Khusraw, 

the sceptre of Anushirwan 
"The holy grail of high Jamshid, Afrasiyab's 

hall? — Canst tell me, man? 

"Gone, gone, where I and thou must go, 

borne by the winnowing wings of Death, 

"The Horror brooding over life, and nearer 
brought with every breath: 

"Their fame hath filled the Seven Climes, they 
rose and reigned, they fought and fell, 

"As swells and swoons across the wold the 
tinkling of the Camel's bell. 



THE KASIDAH Page 83 

There is no Good, there is no Bad; 

these be the whims of mortal will: 
What works me weal that call I 'good/ 

what harms and hurts I hold as 'ill:' 

They change with place, they shift with 

race ; and, in the veriest span of Time, 
Each Vice has worn a Virtue's crown; all 

Good was banned as Sin or Crime: 

Like ravelled skeins they cross and twine, 
while this with that connects and blends; 

And only Khizr his eye shall see where one 
begins, where other ends: 

What mortal shall consort with Khizr, when 

Musa turned in fear to flee? 
What man foresees the flow'er or fruit whom 

Fate compels to plant the tree? 

For Man's Free-will immortal Law, Anagke, 

Kismet, Des'tiny read 
That was, that is, that aye shall be, Star, 

Fortune, Fate, Urd, Norn or Need. 

"Man's nat'ural State is God's design;" 

such is the silly sage's theme; 
"Man's primal Age was Age of Gold ;" 

such is the Poet's waking dream: 

Delusion, Ign'orance! Long ere Man drew 

upon Earth his earli'est breath 
The world was one contin'uous scene of 

anguish, torture, prey and Death; 



Page 84 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

Where hideous Theria of the wild rended 

their fellows limb by limb; 
Where horrid Saurians of the sea in waves 

of blood were wont to swim : 

The "fair young Earth" was only fit to 

spawn her frightful monster-brood; 
Now fiery hot, now icy frore, now reeking 

wet with steamy flood. 



Yon glorious Sun, the greater light, the 
"Bridegroom" of the royal Lyre, 

A flaming, boiling, bursting mine; a grim 
black orb of whirling fire: 

That gentle Moon, the lesser light, the 
Lover's lamp, the Swain's delight, 

A ruined world, a globe burnt out, a corpse 
upon the road of night. 

What reckt he, say, of Good or 111 who in 

the hill-hole made his lair, 
The blood-fed rav'ening Beast of prey, 

wilder than wildest wolf or bear? 

How long in Man's pre-Ad'amite days to 
feed and swill, to sleep and breed, 

Were the brute-biped's only life, a perfect 
life sans Code or Creed? 

His choicest garb a shaggy fell, his choicest 

tool a flake of stone; 
His best of orn'aments tattoo'd skin and 

holes to hang his bits of bone ; 



^ 



THE KAS1DAH Page 85 

Who fought for female as for food when 

Mays awoke to warm desire; 
And such the Lust that grew to Love when 

Fancy lent a purer fire. 

Where then "TV Eternal nature-law by God 

engraved on human heart?" 
Behold his simiad sconce and own the Thing 

could play no higher part. 

Yet, as long ages rolled, he learnt from 

Beaver, Ape and Ant to build 
Shelter for sire and dam and brood, from 

blast and blaze that hurt and killed ; 

And last came Fire ; when scrap of stone 

cast on the flame that lit his den, 
Gave out the shining ore, and made the 

Lord of beasts a Lord of men. 

The "moral sense," your Zahid-phrase, is 

but the gift of latest years; 
Conscience was born when man had shed 

his fur, his tail, his pointed ears. 

What conscience has the murd'erous Moor, 

who slays his guest with felon blow, 
Save sorrow he can slay no more, what 

prick of pen'itence can he know? 

You cry the "Cruelty of Things" is myst'ery 
to your purblind eye, 

Which fixed upon a point in space the gen- 
eral project passes by : 



Page 86 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

For see! the Mammoth went his ways, 

became a mem'ory and a name; 
While the half-reasoner with the hand 

survives his rank and place to claim. 

Earthquake and plague, storm, fight and fray, 

portents and curses man must deem 
Since he regards his self alone, nor cares to 

trace the scope, the scheme; 

The Quake that comes in eyelid's beat to 

ruin, level, 'gulf and kill, 
Builds up a world for better use, to general 

Good bends special 111 : 

The dreadest sound man's ear can hear, the 

war and rush of stormy Wind 
Depures the stuff of human life, breeds 

health and strength for humankind : 

What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, 

good-ills, a loss, a gain, 
When realms arise and falls a roof ; a world 

is won, a man is slain? 

And thus the race of Being runs, till haply in 

the time to be 
Earth shifts her pole and Mushtari-men 

another falling star shall see : 

Shall see it fall and fade from sight, whence 
come, where gone no Thought can tell, — 

Drink of yon mirage-stream and chase the 
tinkling of the camel-bell! 



THE KAS1DAH Page 87 

All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth 

is the shattered mirror strown 
In myriad bits ; while each believes his little 

bit the whole to own. 

What is the Truth? was askt of yore. Reply 

all object Truth is one 
As twain of halves aye makes a whole ; the 

moral Truth for all is none. 

Ye scantly-learned Zahids learn from Aflatun 

and Aristu, 
While Truth is real like your good : th' 

Untrue, like ill, is real too; 

As palace mirror'd in the stream, as vapour 

mingled with the skies, 
So weaves the brain of mortal man the 

tangled web of Truth and Lies. 

What see we here? Forms, nothing more! 

Forms fill the brightest strongest eye, 
We know not substance; 'mid the shades 

shadows ourselves we live and die. 

"Faith mountains move" I hear: I see the 

practice of the world unheed 
The foolish vaunt, the blatant boast that 

serves our vanity to feed. 

"Faith stands unmoved" ; and why? Be- 
cause man's silly fancies still remain, 

And will remain till wiser man the day-dreams 
of his youth disdain. 



Page 88 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

" *T is blessed to believe ;" you say : The 

saying may be true enow 
An it can add to Life a light :— only remains 

to show us how. 

E'en if I could I would believe your tales 

and fables stale and trite, 
Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the 

dulled ear of drowsy wight. 

With God's foreknowledge man's free will! 

what monster-growth of human brain, 
What pow'ers of light shall ever pierce this ,**~s 

puzzle dense with words inane? 

Vainly the heart on Providence calls, such 

aid to seek were hardly wise 
For man must own the pitiless Law that 

sways the globe and sevenfold skies. 

"Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en, 

come pay the priest that holds the key;" 

So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak 
the last to enter Heaven, — he. 

Are these the words for men to hear? yet 

such the Church's general tongue, 
The horseleech-cry so strong so high her 

heav'enward Psalms and Hymns among. 

What? Faith a merit and a claim, when 

with the brain 't is born and bred? 
Go, fool, thy foolish way and dip in holy 

water buried dead! 



THE KAS1DAH Page 89 

Yet follow not th' unwisdom-path, cleave 

not to this and that disclaim ; 
Believe in all that man believes; here all 

and naught are both the same. 

But is it so? How may we know? Haply 

this Fate, this Law may be 
A word, a sound, a breath; at most the 

Zahid's moonstruck theory. 

Yes Truth may be, but 't is not Here; man- 
kind must seek and find it There, 

But Where nor / nor you can tell, nor aught 
earth-mother ever bare. 

Enough to think that Truth can be: come 

sit we where the roses glow, 
Indeed he knows not how to know who 

knows not also how to 'unknow. 



Page 90 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

Man hath no Soul, a state of things, a 

no-thing still, a sound, a word 
Which so begets substantial thing that eye 

shall see what ear hath heard. 

Where was his Soul the savage beast which 

in primeval forests strayed, 
What shape had it, what dwelling-place, 

what part in nature's plan it played? 

This Soul to ree a riddle made ; who wants 

the vain duality? 
Is not myself enough for me? what need of 

"I" within an "I"? 

Words, words that gender things! The 

soul is a new-comer on the scene ; 
Sufficeth not the breath of Life to work the 

matter-born machine? 

We know the Gen'esis of the Soul ; we trace 

the Soul to hour of birth ; 
We mark its growth as grew mankind to 

boast himself sole Lord of Earth : 

The race of Be'ing from dawn of Life in an 

unbroken course was run; 
What men are pleased to call their Souls 

was in the hog and dog begun: 

Life is a ladder infinite-stepped, that hides 

its rungs from human eyes ; 
Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head 

soars high above the skies: 



THE KASIDAH Page 9! 

No break the chain of Being bears ; all 

things began in unity; 
And lie the links in regular line though 

haply none the sequence see. 

The Ghost, embodied natural Dread of 

dreary death and foul decay, 
Begat the Spirit, Soul and Shade with 

Hades' pale and wan array. 

The Soul required a greater Soul, a Soul of 

Souls, to rule the host; 
Hence spirit-powers and hierarchies, all 

gendered by the savage Ghost. 

Not yours, ye Peoples of the Book, these 

fairy visions fair and fond, 
Got by the gods of Khemi-land and faring 

far the seas beyond! 

"Th* immortal mind of mortal man !" we 

hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; 
Whose mind but means his sum of thought, 

an essence of atomic "I." 

Thought is the work of brain and nerve, in 

small-skulled idiot poor and mean; 
In sickness sick, in sleep asleep, and dead 

when Death lets drop the scene. 

"Tush!" quoth the Zahid, "well we ken 

the teaching of the school abhorr'd 
"That maketh man automaton, mind a 

secretion, soul a word. 



Page 92 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

"Of molecules and protoplasm you matter- 
mongers prompt to prate ; 

"Of jelly-speck, development and apes that 
grew to man's estate." 

Vain cavil! all that is hath come either by 

Mir'acle or by Law; — 
Why waste on this your hate and fear, why 

waste on that your love and awe? 

Why heap such hatred on a word, why 

"Prototype" to type assign, 
Why upon matter spirit mass? wants an 

appendix your design? 

Is not the highest honour his who from the 

worst hath drawn the best; 
May not your Maker make the world from 

matter, an it suit His hest? 

Nay more, the sordider the stuff the cun- 

ninger the workman's hand : 
Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to 

bind, to bound, to understand. 

"Reason and Instinct!" How we love to 
play with words that please our pride; 

Our noble race's mean descent by false 
forged titles seek to hide ! 

For "gift divine" I bid you read the better 

work of higher brain, 
From Instinct differing in degree as golden ' 

mine from leaden vein. 



THE KAS1DAH Page 93 

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic 

Laby'rinth's single clue: 
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what 

crosses it can ne'er be true. 

"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" 

Angels and Fools have equal claim 
To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope 

of praise, sans fear of blame! 

* * * 




Page 94 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

There is no Heav'en, there is no Hell; 

these be the dreams of baby minds; 
Tools of the wily Fetisheer, to 'fright the 

fools his cunning blinds. 

Learn from the mighty Spi'rits of old to set 

thy foot on Heav'en and Hell; 
In Life to find thy hell and heaven as thou 

abuse or use it well. 

So deemed the doughty Jew who dared by 

studied silence low to lay 
Orcus and Hades, lands of shades, the 

gloomy night of human day. 

Hard to the heart is final death : fain would 

an Ens not end in Nil; 
Love made the senti'ment kindly good: the 

Priest perverted all to ill. 

While Reason sternly bids us die, Love 

longs for life beyond the grave : 
Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears for 

Life-to-be shall ever crave. 

Hence came the despot's darling dream, a 

Church to rule and sway the State; 
Hence sprang the train of countless griefs in 

priestly sway and rule innate. 

For future Life who dares reply? No 

witness at the bar have we ; 
Save what the brother Potsherd tells, — old 

tales and novel jugglery. 



THE KAS1DAH Page 95 

Who e'er return'd to teach the Truth, the 

things of Heaven and Hell to limn? 
And all we hear is only fit for grandam-talk 

and nursery-hymn. 

"Have mercy, man!" the Zahid cries, "of 

our best visions rob us not! 
"Mankind a future life must have to balance 

life's unequal lot. 

"Nay," quoth the Magian " 't is not so ; I 

draw my wine for one and all, 
A cup for this, a score for that, e'en as his 

measure's great or small: 

"Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; 

to poorest passion he was born; 
"Who drains the score must e'er expect to 

rue the headache of the morn." 

Safely he jogs along the way which 'Golden 

Mean' the sages call; 
Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must 

face full many a slip and fall. 

Here extremes meet, anointed Kings whose 

crowned heads uneasy lie, 
Whose cup of joy contains no more than 

tramps that on the dunghill die. 

To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred for 

dangling from the gallows-tree ; 
To Saint who spends his holy days in 

rapt'urous hope his God to see; 



Page 96 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

To all that breathe our upper air the hands 

of Dest'iny ever deal, 
In fixed and equal parts, their shares of joy 

and sorrow, woe and weal. 

"How comes it, then, our span of days in 

hunting wealth and fame we spend 
"Why strive we (and all humans strive) for 

vain and visionary end?" 

Reply ; mankind obeys a law that bids him 

labour, struggle, strain; 
The Sage well knowing its unworth, the 

Fool a-dreaming foolish gain. 

And who, 'mid e'en the Fools, but feels that 

half the joy is in the race 
For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs 

when comes success to crown the chase? 

Again: In Hind, Chin, Franguestan that 

accident of birth befell, 
Without our choice, our will, our voice : 

Faith is an accident as well. 

What to the Hindu saith the Frank : "Denier 

of the Laws divine! 
However godly-good thy Life, Hell is the 

home for thee and thine." 

"Go strain the draught before 't is drunk, 
and learn that breathing every breath, 

"With every step, with every gest, some 
thing of life thou do'est to death." 



THE KAS1DAH P«8 e 97 

Replies the Hindu : "Wend thy way for 

foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit ; 
"Your Pariah-par'adise woo and win; at 

such dog-Heav'en I laugh and spit. 

"Cannibals of the Holy Cow ! who make 

your rav'ening maws the grave 
"Of Things with self-same right to live; — 

what Fiend the filthy license gave?" 

What to the Moslem cries the Frank? "A 
polygamic Theist thou! 

"From an impostor-Prophet turn; thy stub- 
born head to Jesus bow." 

Rejoins the Moslem: "Allah 's one tho' with 

four Moslemahs I wive, 
"One-wife-men ye and (damned race !) you 

split your God to Three and Five." 

The Buddhist to Confucians thus : "Like 

dogs ye live, like dogs ye die ; 
"Content ye rest with wretched earth; God, 

Judgment, Hell ye fain defy." 

Retorts the Tartar : "Shall I lend mine only 

ready-money 'now/ 
For vain usurious 'Then* like thine, 

avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!" 

"With this poor life, with this mean world 

I fain complete what in me lies; 
I strive to perfect this my me; my sole 

ambition's to be wise." 



Page 98 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

When doctors differ who decides amid the 

milliard-headed throng ? 
Who save the madman dares to cry : " 'T is 

I am right, you all are wrong?" 

"You all are right, you all are wrong," we 

hear the careless Soofi say, 
"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp to 

be the gorgeous light of day." 

"Thy faith why false, mp faith why true? 

't is all the work of Thine and Mine, 
"The fond and foolish love of self that 

makes the Mine excel the Thine." 

Cease then to mumble rotten bones ; and 

strive to clothe with flesh and blood 
The skel'eton ; and to shape a Form that all 

shall hail as fair and good. 

"For gen'erous youth," an Arab saith, 

"Jahim 's the only genial state; 
"Give us the fire but not the shame with 

the sad, sorry blest to mate." 

And if your Heav'en and Hell be true, and 

Fate that forced me to be born 
Force me to Heaven or Hell — I go, and 

hold Fate's insolence in scorn. 

I want not this, I want not that, already sick 

of Me and Thee; 
And if we're both transform'd and changed, 

what then becomes of Thee and Me? 



THE KAS1DAH Page 99 

Enough to think such things may be : to say 

they are not or they are 
Were folly : leave them all to Fate, nor wage 

on shadows useless war. 

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from 

none but self expect applause; 
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes 

and keeps his self-made laws. 

All other Life is living Death, a world where 

none but Phantoms dwell, 
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling 

of the camel-bell. 



Page 100 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

How then shall man so order life that 

when his tale of years is told, 
Like sated guest he wend his way ; how 

shall his even tenour hold? 

Despite the Writ that stores the skull; 

despite the Table and the Pen ; 
Maugre the Fate that plays us down, her 

board the world, her pieces men? 

How when the light and glow of life wax 

dim in thickly gath'ering gloom, 
Shall mortal scoff at sting of Death, shall 

scorn the victory of the Tomb? 

One way, two paths, one end the grave. 

This runs athwart the flow'ery plain, 
That breasts the bush, the steep, the crag, 

in sun and wind and snow and rain: 

Who treads the first must look adown, must 

deem his life an all in all; 
Must see no heights where man may rise, must 

sight no depths where man may fall. 

Allah in Adam form must view; adore the 

Maker in the made 
Content to bask in Maya's smile, in joys of 

pain, in lights of shade. 

He breaks the Law, he burns the Book, he 

sends the Moolah back to school; 
Laughs at the beards of Saintly men; and 

dubs the Prophet dolt and fool, 



THE KAS1DAH Page 101 

Embraces Cypress' taper-waist; cools feet on 

wavy breast of rill; 
Smiles in the Nargis' love-lorn eyes, and 

'joys the dance of Daffodil; 

Melts in the saffron light of Dawn to hear 

the moaning of the Dove; 
Delights in Sundown's purpling hues when 

Bulbul woos the Rose's love. 

Finds mirth and joy in Jamshid-bowl ; toys 

with the Daughter of the vine ; 
And bids the beauteous cup-boy say, "Master 

I bring thee ruby wine!" 

Sips from the maiden's lips the dew; brushes 

the bloom from virgin brow: — 
Such is his fleshly bliss that strives the 

Maker through the Made to know. 

I've tried them all, I find them all so same 
and tame, so drear, so dry; 

My gorge ariseth at the thought; I com- 
mune with myself and cry : — 

Better the myriad toils and pains that make 

the man to manhood true, 
This be the rule that guideth life; these be 

the laws for me and you: 

With Ignor'ance wage eternal war, to know 

thy self for ever strain, 
Thine ignorance of thine ignorance is thy 

fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane ; 



Page 102 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

That blunts thy sense, and dulls thy taste ; that 
deafs thine ears, and blinds thine eyes; 

Creates the thing that never was, the Thing 
that ever is defies. 

The finite Atom infinite that forms thy 

circle's centre-dot, 
So full-sufficient for itself, for other selves 

existing not, 

Finds the world mighty as 't is small; yet 

must be fought the unequal fray; 
A myriad giants here; and there a pinch of 

dust, a clod of clay. 

Yes ! maugre all thy dreams of peace still 

must the fight unfair be fought ; 
Where thou mayst learn the noblest lore, 

to know that all we know is nought. 

True to thy Nature, to Thy self, Fame and 

Disfame nor hope nor fear: 
Enough to thee the small still voice aye 

thund'ering in thine inner ear. 

From self -approval seek applause: What ken 

not men thou kennest, thou! 
Spurn ev'ry idol others raise : Before thine 

own Ideal bow: 

Be thine own Deus : Make self free, liberal 

as the circling air: 
Thy Thought to thee an Empire be ; break 

every prison'ing lock and bar: 



THE KASWAH Page 103 

Do thou the Ought to self aye owed ; here 

all the duties meet and blend, 
In widest sense, withouten care of what 

began, for what shall end. 

Thus, as thou view the Phantom-forms 

which in the misty Past were thine, 
To be again the thing thou wast with honest 

pride thou may'st decline ; 

And, glancing down the range of years, fear 

not thy future self to see; 
Resign'd to life, to death resign'd, as though 

the choice were nought to thee. 

On Thought itself feed not thy thought; 

nor turn from Sun and Light to gaze, 
At darkling cloisters paved with tombs, 

where rot the bones of bygone days: 

"Eat not thy heart," the Sages said ; "nor 

mourn the Past, the buried Past;" 
Do what thou dost, be strong, be brave ; 

and, like the Star, nor rest nor haste. 

Pluck the old woman from thy breast : Be 

stout in woe, be stark in weal; 
Do good for Good is good to do : Spurn 

bribe of Heav'en and threat of Hell. 

To seek the True, to glad the heart, such is 

of life the HIGHER LAW, 
Whose difference is the Man's degree, the 

Man of gold, the Man of straw. 




Page 104 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

See not that something in Mankind that 

rouses hate or scorn or strife, 
Better the worm of Izrail than Death that 

walks in form of life. 

Survey thy kind as One whose wants in the 

great Human Whole unite; 
The Homo rising high from earth to seek 

the Heav'ens of Lif e-in-Light ; 

And hold Humanity one man, whose univer- 
sal agony 

Still strains and strives to gain the goal, 
where agonies shall cease to be. 

Believe in all things; none believe; judge 

not nor warp by "Facts" the thought; 
See clear, hear clear, tho' life may seem 

Maya and Mirage, Dream and Naught. 

Abjure the Why and seek the How : the 

God and gods enthroned on high, 
Are silent all, are silent still ; nor hear thy 

voice, nor deign reply. 

The Now, that indivisible point which studs 

the length of infinite line 
Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the 

puny all thou callest thine. 

Perchance the law some Giver hath: Let 

be! let be! what canst thou know? 
A myriad races came and went; this Sphinx 

hath seen them come and go. 



THE KASIDAH Page 105 

Haply the Law that rules the world allows 

to man the widest range; 
And haply Fate 's a Theist-word, subject to 

human chance and change. 

This "I" may find a future Life, a nobler 

copy of our own, 
Where every riddle shall be ree'd, where 

every knowledge shall be known; 

x 

Where 't will be man's to see the whole of 

what on Earth he sees in part ; 
Where change shall ne'er surcharge the 

thought ; nor hope defer'd shall hurt the heart. 

But! — faded flow'er and fallen leaf no more 

shall deck the parent tree; 
And man once dropt by Tree of Life what 

hope of other life has he? 

The shatter'd bowl shall know repair; the 

riven lute shall sound once more ; 
But who shall mend the clay of man, the 

stolen breath to man restore? 

The shiver'd clock again shall strike; the 

broken reed shall pipe again: 
But we, we die, and Death is one, the doom 

of brutes, the doom of men. 

Then, if Nirwana round our life with 

nothingness, 't is haply best ; 
Thy toils and troubles, want and woe at 

length have won their guerdon — Rest. 



Page 106 SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON 

Cease, Abdu, Cease! Thy song is sung, nor 

think the gain the singer's prize; 
Till men hold Ignor'ance deadly sin, till man 

deserves his title "Wise:" 

In Days to come, Days slow to dawn, when 

Wisdom deigns to dwell with men, 
These echoes of a voice long stilled haply 

shall wake responsive strain: 

Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear 
not thy humble tale to tell: — 

The whispers of the Desert-wind; the Tink- 
ling of the camel's bell. 



nbv 




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sY~\ 



PART IV 




vv 



W 



ODmar SCfyagijam 



Omar, dear Sultan of the Persian Song, 
Familiar Friend whom I have loved so long. 

Whose Volume made my pleasant Hiding-place 
From this fantastic World of Right and Wrong. 

My Youth lies buried in thy Verses: lo, 
I read, and as the haunted Numbers flow, 

My Memory turns in anguish to the Fact 
That leaned oer Omars pages long ago. 

Alas for Me, alas for all who weep 
And wonder at the Silence dark and deep 

That girdles round this little Lamp in space 
No wiser than when Omar fell asleep. 

Rest in thy Grave beneath the crimson rain 
Of heart-desired Roses. Life is vain, 

And vain the trembling Legends we may trace 
Upon the open Book that shuts again. 



jr 



\ 




RVBA1YAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 113 



SuBttn f^mttlg ifflrCHaritm 



TO Dante Gabriel Rossetti we owe this treasure — the 
"Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"— rescued by him from "the 
penny box" in the book-stalls of Piccadilly. 

And it was in that brotherhood of artists known as the "Pre- 
Raphaelites" that the study of the "Rubaiyat" soon grew into a de- 
voted homage and from this time on the Omaric cult developed and 
spread very rapidly, until in 1868 a new edition was forthcoming. 
Nearly a decade had gone by since the — "Beggarly disguise as to 
paper and print, but magnificent vesture of verse" — had issue from 
the press of Bernard Quaritch in an edition of 250 copies. 

The translator — that shy recluse — "who took as much pains 
to avoid fame as others did to seek it," continued to remain 
behind his wall of anonymity. 

We learn that in 1863, Mr. Ruskin had intrusted to Mrs. 
Burne-Jones — being the wife of a "Pre-Raphaelite," a letter ad- 
dressed "To the translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam;" 
but it would appear that she herself was no more enlightened upon 
the matter, for after keeping the letter nearly ten years, she handed 
it to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, who had written a critique in the 
North American Review for October, 1869, upon the second edition 
of the "Rubaiyat." Mr. Norton seems to have been as much in the 
dark as the others, for some time elapsed before he turned 
the letter over to Thomas Carlyle, who in turn, shortly trans- 
mitted it to Edward Fitzgerald. Thus we see that the dis- 
covery of Fitzgerald by the public was as much an accident 
as the discovery of Omar by Fitzgerald himself. 

Justin Huntly McCarthy has said in his exquisite preface — 
"I drank the red wine of Omar from the enchanted chalice of 
Fitzgerald and gloried as joyously as did Omar himself in the 
intoxication — I made myself a kind of little religion out of 



Page 114 McCarthy version 

Omar, and while my Persian to-day is at best beggarly, such 
as it is it has given me infinite pleasure — I have got a little 
nearer to the great poet of Naishapur." Mr. McCarthy studied 
Persian solely that he might know Omar, and his rendition 
in prose stimulates our poetic senses and we catch the fancy 
and color of his own personal rhythm. 



( 



v 



^ 
/? 




yustin Huntly McCarthy s 
Prose Version 
of the 

Ettbatgat /*~"" s ^ 
©mar Kfyagjjam 



*rf^"^ 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 119 



Qty? Stobatgat of (©mar iKljagijam 



Since it is the fate of man upon this hateful earth to 
feed on sorrow and to vex his soul, he must be accounted 
happy who departs swiftly from the world, but he most 
happy who never comes into the world. 

When I am dead, wash me with vintage juice ; instead 
of prayers recite over my tomb hymnals of wine and; 
flagons, and if you seek me at the latter day, look for me 
in the dust upon the tavern threshold. 

I passed by where a potter kneaded earth and I beheld 
what he did not behold, that it was my father's dust 
which lay in the palm of that potter. 

O Khayyam, why so much mourning for your sin? 
What consolation can you find in thus plaguing your- 
self? He who has never sinned can never taste the 
sweet of forgiveness. Mercy was made for the sake of 
sin, therefore why are you afraid? 

When our blood beats quickest with joy of the green 
earth, when the steeds of the sun sweep over the green 
earth, I love to v/ander with lovely girls upon the green 
earth, making merry together before we are all turned 
to green earth. 



Page 120 McCarthy version 

Place the wine-cup in my hand, for my heart is all afire 
and life slips from us swift as quicksilver. Arise, my be- 
loved, for the favour of fortune is but a cheating dream, 
arise, for the flame of youth gushes like the water of the 
torrent. 

I saw upon the walls of Thous a bird perched in front 
ot the skull of Kai Khosrou. The bird said unto the' 
skull, "Alas, what has become of the clash of the gear of 
thy glory and the bruit of thy trumpets?" 

My run of life slips by in a few days. It has passed 
me by like the wind of the desert. Therefore, so long as 
one breath of life is left to me, there are two days with 
which I shall never vex my spirit, the day that has not 
yet come, and the day that has gone by. 

This captain ruby comes from an unknown mine. 
This perfect gem is stamped with an unknown seal. All 
our conclusions on the question are vain, for the riddle 
of perfect love is written in an unknown tongue. 

Let us abandon the vain search after the unattainable, 
and give ourselves up wholly to the joys of the present, 
to touching the long tresses trembling to the melodious 
sound of the harp. 

You have wandered upon the face of the earth, but all 
that you have known is nothing, all that you have seen, 
all that you have heard, is nothing. Though you travel 
from world's end to world's end, all that is nothing, 
although you abide in a corner of your house, all tha* is 
nothing. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 121 

Although, truly, I have never pierced the pearl of obe- 
dience which we owe to Thee, although I have never 
swept the dust of Thy steps from my heart, I do not de- 
spair of reaching to the foot of the throne of Thy mercy, 
for I have never worried Thee with my importunate 
prayers. 

Before ever you or I were born, there were dawns and 
twilights, and it was not without design that the revolu- 
tions of the skies were sanctioned. Be careful, then, how 
you tread upon this dust, for it was once, no doubt, the 
apple of some fair girl's eye. 

Question me not upon the vagaries of this world, nor 
of the things that yet may be. Look upon this present 
hour as plunder from destiny. Vex not thyself about the 
past, nor plague me about the future. 

If you will hearken I will give you good counsel. Do 
not don the cloak of hypocrisy for the love of God. 
Eternity is of all time, and this world is but of a mo- 
ment. Do not, then, barter for a moment the empery of 
eternity. 

Thou hast planted in our hearts an irresistible aesire, 
and at the same time Thou hast forbidden us to satisfy 
it. In what a strait dost thou find thyself, oh, unhappy 
man, between this law of thy nature, and this command- 
ment? It is as if thou wert ordered to turn down the 
cup, without spilling the contents thereof. 



Page 122 McCarthy version 

Give not thyself over to care and to grief in the hope 
of gaining yellow or white money in the end. Enjoy 
thyself with thy companions, before thy warm breath 
becomes cold, for thy enemies will feast in thy room 
when thou art departed. 

O, my friends, when I am sped, appoint a meeting and 
when ye have met together, be ye glad thereof, and when 
the cup-bearer holds in her hand a flagon of old wine, then 
think upon old Khayyam and drink to his memory. 

There is no shield to save you from the spear-cast of 
destiny. Glory, gold, silver, each avails not. The more 
I ponder on this world and its gear, the more I am as- 
sured that to be good is all ; the rest avails not. 

I pity the heart that is not prompted to abstinence, for 
it is the daily prey of passions. Only the heart that is 
free from care can be truly happy; aught in excess of 
that state is mere vexation. 

When God built up my body out of clay, He knew be- 
forehand the fruit of all my deeds. It is not in defiance 
of His will that I a sinner have sinned. Why then for 
me does nether hell await? 

Every heart in which Heaven hath set the lamp of love, 
whether that heart incline to mosque or synagogue, if 
its name be written in the book of love, it is freed from 
the fear of hell and the hope of paradise. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 123 

How fair are the green fringes of the living stream. 
Surely they sprang once from the lip of some celestial 
fair. Trample them not with scorn, for they spring from 
the dust of a tulip-tinted face. 

Since life flies, what matters it whether it be sweet or 
bitter? Since our soul must escape through our lips, 
what matters it whether it be at Naishapur or Babylon? 
Drink, then, for after thou and I are dust, the moon will 
for many days pass from her last to her first quarter, and 
from her first to her last. 

Of all who have set out upon the long journey, who 
has come back, that I may ask him tidings? My friends, 
take heed to let naught go by in the hope of hopes for, 
be sure, you will not come back again. 

Since every waning night, every waning day, cuts off 
a cantle of your life, do not allow these nights and days 
to heap you thick with dust. Daff them gaily by, for, 
alas, what a world of time you will be gone hence while 
nights and days still wax and wane. 

A love-lorn nightingale, straying into a garden, and be- 
holding the roses smiling, and the cup filled with wine, 
flew to my ear and sang, "Be advised, friend, there is no 
recalling the vanished life." 

O ! my heart, act as if all the wealth of this world were 
thine — think that this house is furnished with all things, 
that it is adorned sumptuously ; and pass thy life joyfully 
in this distracted sphere. Say to thyself that thou rest- 
est here for but a few days, and wilt then arise and 
depart. 



Page 124 McCarthy version 

Sweet is it to drink red wine in a fair cup. Sweet it is 
to hear the wedded melodies of lutes and harps. The 
fanatic who recks not of the joys of a cup of wine is pleas- 
ing only when he is a thousand miles away from us. 

Believe not that I fear the world, or that the thought of 
death and the departure of my soul fills me with terror. 
Since death is a truth, what have I to fear from it? All 
that I fear is, that my life has not been well spent. 

I would sell the diadem of the khan, the crown of the 
king, to purchase the song of the flute girl. Let us sell 
the turban, yea and the garment of silk, for a cup of 
wine; let us sell the chaplet which alone contains a mul- 
titude of hypocrisy. 

O my friend, come hither, let us forget to-day and 
to-morrow, and steal this one short hour of life. When 
to-morrow we shall have abandoned this old dwelling- 
place, we shall become the contemporaries of all those 
who departed hence for the last seven thousand years. 

This world has gained nothing by my sojourn here be- 
low, and its glory and greatness will not be lessened by 
my departure. I have never heard with my ears, and 
have never been told by anyone the reason of my coming 
or going. 

In this mad world of medley, make haste to pick some 
flowers. Sit in the high places of laughter, and press the 
cup to your lips. Heaven is heedless alike of sin or serv- 
ice, so make merry after your heart's desire. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 125 

My love has touched the topmost of its flame. The 
beauty of her who holds my heart in thrall is beyond 
praise. My heart speaks, but my tongue, made mute, re- 
fuses utterance to my thoughts. High heaven, was aught 
ever seen so strange! I am racked with thirst, and yet 
a fresh cool stream flows before me. 

Alas! How long the time will be when we are no 
longer in this world, and the world will still exist. There 
will remain of us neither fame nor trace. The world 
was not imperfect before we came into it — it will be in no 
wise changed when we are departed hence. 
\ \ 

Behold the little handful of fools, who hold the world 
in their hands, and who in their simple folly think them- 
selves the wisest of the wise. Vex not yourself, for in 
their snug content they call all men heretics who are not 
of a kindred folly. 

Abandon thyself to enjoyment, for sorrow is without 
end. The stars will assemble in the heavens in their 
former courses, and of the bricks which they make from 
thy body will they build palaces for others. 

Those who have trod the world beneath their feet, who 
have wandered over the world in the pursuit of gain, 
have never learned the living truth of life. 

Alas, the season of my youth decays, the kindly spring 
of our delights goes by, and that delightful bird, whose 
name is Youth, has flown. It came, I know not whence, 
and goes, I know not whither. 



Page 126 McCarthy version 

When you find yourself in the fellowship of some 
cypress-slender girl, more tender-tinted than the early 
rose, do not hold aloof from the flowers of the meadow, 
do not let the cup fall from your hand before the angel 
of death, like unto the wild wind that scatters abroad the 
rose-leaves, tears asunder the veil of thy existence. 



The day when I shall no longer be known to myself, 
and when they speak of me as a tale that it told: then, 
my heart's desire is that from my ashes may be formed 
a wine jar for the tavern. 

May I always hold in my hand a brimming flagon! 
May my love never wane for those fair girls, like unto 
Houris. Folk say, God bids you renounce these joys, 
but if He gave me such an order, I should not obey it. 
Perish the thought! 



When you drink, drink with a witty fellowship, drink 
with fair women with smiling lips and tulip-tinted 
cheeks. Drink not too deep, do not babble about it. Do 
not make it a catch word; drink, but drink discreetly, 
and in secret. 



To-morrow I shall have leaped over the mountain 
which divideth us, and shall seize the cup in my hand 
with surpassing joy. My beloved is gracious, the hour is 
fair and favouring. If I hasten not to rejoice in this mo- 
ment when shall I know joy and gladness? 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 127 

He who, in this world, possesses half a loaf and can 
shelter himself in any nest, he who is neither the master, 
nor slave of any man, tell him his lot is sweet and tran- 
quil, and he should live content therein. 

Folk talk of Paradise where houris dwell, where the 
Heavenly river flows, where wine and honey and sugar 
abound! Bah! Fill me quick a cup of wine and put it 
in my hand, for a present pleasure is worth a thousand 
future joys. 

Oh, my friend, wherefore vex thyself with the problem 
of existence? Wherefore trouble thy heart and thy soul 
thus with idle questioning? Live thy life in joy and 
gladness, for after all, thy counsel was not asked in the 
ordering of human affairs. 

It is said that there will be judgment at the last day, 
and that the Beloved Friend will be enraged. But from 
the Eternal Goodness, good alone can proceed. Fear 
not, therefore, for thou shalt find mercy at the last. 

Wine is forbidden, it is said, but it is only forbidden in 
regard to him who makes no measure of what he drinks, 
and the one with whom he drinks. All the conditions 
once held in observance, will not the wise man drink? 

Thou shouldst not plant the tree of bitterness in thy 
heart, but rather flutter at all times the leaves of the book 
of joy. Thou shouldst drink thy wine, and pursue the 
desire of thy heart, for behold the length of thy stay on 
this earth is quickly measured. 



Page 128 McCarthy version 

Wert thou as wise as Aristotle, wert thou as potent as 
Roman Caesar, or Monarch of Cathay, drink, drink, I say, 
in the cup of Djemshid, for the grave is the end of all, 
yea, wert thou Bahram himself, the tomb is thy final 
abode. 

Arise, dash down me cares of fleeting life, be merry in 
this momentary being. If heaven had been constant in 
its gifts to others, remember that you could never have 
taken their turn of enjoyment. 

I saw a hermit in a desert place. He was neither 
heretic nor true believer, he had neither riches, nor creed, 
nor God, nor truth, nor law, nor knowledge. Where is 
the man of like courage in this world or the other world? 

Know you why at the hour of the dawning the cock 
shrills his frequent clarion? It is but to remind you by 
the mirror of morning, that from your existence a night 
has slipped, and you are still ignorant. 

Say, what man on earth has never sinned? Say, who 
could live and never sin? If, therefore, because I do ill 
You punish me by ill, say, then, where is the difference 
between Thee and me? 

Never wound with sorrow a joyous heart, nor break 
with the stones of torment one moment of delight. Since 
none can say what is to come, our needs are wine, a 
beloved, and desireful ease. 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM Page 129 

Some meditate of religions and beliefs, some sway be- 
wildered betwixt doubt and knowledge. Suddenly the 
watcher cries, "Fools, your road is not here nor there." 

Where are ruby lips, jewels of youth? Where is the 
scented wine that soothes the soul? It is forbidden by 
the Moslem creed. Drink, for where is the Moslem 
creed? 

Give me a flagon of red wine, a book of verses, a loaf 
of bread, and a little idleness. If with such store I might 
sit by thy dear side in some lonely place, I should deem 
myself happier than a king in his kingdom. 



■ ■ ■ 



X 



The Immortal Edition of the f&tlnttb 
Works of Eimarii ]$itz$?vnlb, Str^arin H? 
(galltttttt?, Bxr SUrtfarfc 3mnt\B Surtmt, 
and SuBttn Ijxttttlg iMr<Eart%, consisting 
of five hundred volumes, compiled and 
edited by Gurtrude Flower, is pub- 
lished in New York, N. Y, in the 
year Nineteen- Hundred- and- Thirteen 



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